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YOUR BASKET IS EMPTY |
| Excerpts from The L.A. Times Newspaper Article - July 11, 2002
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Beyond the Bouquet
L.A. florists put their mettle to the petal in an ongoing contest to create cutting-edge arrangements. By JEANNINE STEIN, Times Staff Writer A studio head wants to send a big box-office star flowers after her newest movie rakes in $75 million over the weekend. Think a dozen long-stemmed roses will do? Forget it. You might as well send smiley-face balloons and a Whitman's Sampler. In a city where appearances count, floral design has become an ultra-competitive, big-bucks (average arrangement $100, no upper limit), high-stakes business with constant pressure to come up with traffic stopping, cutting-edge designs. While sending the snapdragon and carnation bouquet from page 7 of the generic flower arrangement catalog may work for some, others consider nothing but flora in the highest possible style. ----- Rose aficionados who turn their noses up at contrived bouquets with baby's breath and ferns can opt for 100 roses standing straight up in a low box, tied together with crisscrossed branches and accented with more roses and greenery at the bottom. If congratulations are in order, how about a bottle of champagne placed in a cylindrical glass vase topped with a lush bouquet - an effect that makes the flowers look as though they're floating? Or, for a more modern, minimalist look perhaps a submerged single orchid, roots exposed, in a pebble-filled glass vase framed with bamboo stalks and curly willow?
These arrangements are not only decorating Hollywood parties, million-dollar weddings, chic restaurants and elaborate bar and bat mitzvah celebrations, but are also getting national attention by showing up in splashy spreads in magazines and on television shows. With florists turning out 100 to 200 arrangements in one day and booking events months in advance, there is no such thing as down time. Some shops employ as many as 16 full-time designers with backgrounds in everything from fine art to fashion. ------ Lisa Yamagata, manager and floral designer at the Empty Vase in West Hollywood, voraciously reads newspapers and shelter and fashion magazines, but also finds ideas in store window displays. Adds shop owner Saeed Babaeean, "We're in a neighborhood with antiques stores and design studios -- that helps a lot. It makes it easier to be creative." Babaeean also finds inspiration in the flowers themselves: "If you look at them really carefully," he says, "they'll tell you what you should do with them. I don't plan the designing in advance. Each flower will tell you how to use it."
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Delivery in Southern California - Worldwide Delivery Service 9033 Santa Monica Boulevard West Hollywood, CA 90069 Toll 888.283.9890 Phone 310.278.1988 Fax: 310.278.1676 |
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