“The first thing they showed me was a photo of a girl who had an orchid stem stuck in her ear, like she has a pierced ear with just the stem sticking through,” renowned Los Angeles florist Joseph Free says backstage at Rodarte’s Fall 2016 show, where he is sitting in front of a table covered in flower blossoms. With a team of two, Free is plucking micro-orchids—oncidiums and phalaenopsises, to be precise—and securing them to dainty jewelry pieces that will be worn in models’ hair and on their ears and arms during today’s runway show. There are calla lilies nearby, and a giant stalk of radiant fuchsia blossoms looms.
“It was their concept really,” he continues, signaling to Kate and Laura Mulleavy, who are buzzing about backstage. “They had certain inspirations like Art Nouveau, romanticism, and then ephemerality, so that was the inspiration for adding the fresh flowers. They made sketches of what they wanted, and though it’s evolved a little bit, it looks a lot like how they sketched it out and what their concept was.”
Free’s final creations are a far cry from the flower crowns or adornments one might expect. They hang daintily from earrings, dusting models’ necks, and weave their way through chignons crafted by Odile Gilbert. Free’s pièce de résistance is a golden headpiece that wraps around the back of the head with orchids dotted throughout, suited for a modern wood nymph (or one of the sisters’ starlet friends). “It needs to be like jewelry so it doesn’t come off as another flower crown or another flower accessory, so my inspiration was to get more gold things and have pieces dangle so there’s a movement to it,” he says.
Will his floral creations live on past today? Perhaps. “It’s easy enough to pull the flowers off, so you could just pull them off and put another one on. They’re playful, but I don’t know that they’re forever,” he admits. All the more reason to see them come to life here in exclusive GIFs shot backstage.
Watch the Rodarte Fall 2016 Ready-to-Wear show:
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