Submitted by Anita Li AIFD and Florence Ling AIFD
We are honoured to be invited to participate in some styling photoshoots with a local fashion magazine “Jessica” in Hong Kong from their Feb to May issue. It was nice to move away from daily commercial designs to create something artistic and fun!
One of the projects was “Artful Blooms” whereby we designed for some very close headshots with vibrant flowers in spring colour palette.
Inspired by blooming spring gardens, the first idea we came up with was a lush head piece with a mini trellis and flowers growing all around the face! We used almost all colours around the colour wheel, yet we orchestrated them with varying flower sizes, shapes and textures. How delightful it was to be literally surrounded by beautiful flowers!
The second idea was to create a necklace with very delicate blooms, we wanted to make it airy and bouncing around instead of gluing them rigidly onto a necklace frame. First we cut out strips of balsa wood, very commonly used for craft making and is very light weighted. These thin pieces are then threaded onto a 20 gauge wire, then curved to fit the model’s neck. To let the flowers float, we pinched a tiny hole on each piece of wood strip and threaded through pieces of decorative wire in various lengths. We then simply attached mini and light weighted flowers such as Pansies, Orchids, Ornithogalum to the ends of the decorative wire to let them dance in the air while the model moves and poses for the photo shoot!
Coming into the May issue, where it is all about luxury Jewellery, all those huge gemstones and delicate craftsmanship will make your jaw drop! The difficult part is not to have the floral design give away to those glamorous Jewelry pieces yet keeping the wholeness of the styling undisturbed. We wanted to keep things simple but with an impact, unlike the previous styling session, this time we go for monochromic scheme, or to use just one type of flower as main theme, for each style. In this way the flowers are focused and not too over the top to go together with the fine art Jewelry, they make a story together and don’t compet against each other!
Here we made a headpiece filled with asparagus setaceus plumosus, most unusual material to pick for a headpiece. We loved the volume the foliage gave to the hairpiece yet keeping it lightweight; the silhouette of the vines cascading downwards like feathers of a big bird, and to give it a little bit more depth, we added some hedera leaves wired into the base. The result is unique, low profile but remarkable.
Under the “Elf” theme of the photo shoot, we made garlands out of Hydrangea florets with very thin decorative wire and put them loosely around the model’s head and shoulders. It was
just like an elf got some florets brought to her hair by the summer breeze in the wood.
In another scene, we made one extra lengthy garland out of salal and hedera vines, topped up with peony Bartzella in pale yellow. Pure and innocent as it is, keeping our designs raw and natural looking such that it looks like it was made by the elf herself, by picking flowers from the woods!
This final piece evolved from a bundle of tumbleweed that was given to us months ago by our supplier. We were looking around the storeroom trying to find inspiration from the stock of dried products we had, and this caught our eyes. We thought of making a pair of wings for her, but an elf wouldn’t have wings. So, we made her a pair of raised shoulder piece sitting on her shoulder like a Medici collar, fitted for the queen of the woods! We had to wire the tumbleweed bit by bit and insert them onto a piece of half cut pool noodle covered with natural color moss, then they were adorned with some preserved leatherleaf fern and dried Glixia. Giving this collar its final touch, we added some fresh Orlaya flowers, staying monotone and delicate looking.
Very nice floral coschum / dressing.