Meet our Designers for American Flowers Week 2020
06 Wednesday May 2020
Written by Debra Prinzing in American Flowers Week 2020, Botanical Couture, Floral Design, Resources for Farmers & Florists
Tags
Alison Grace Higgins, Electric Flora, Floras & Bouquets, Florists Review, Grace Flowers Hawaii, Hawaii-grown flowers, Hillary Alger, Johnny's Selected Seeds, Kim Herning, Maine-grown Flowers, Michelle Rech, Monica Pugh, Northern Lights Peonies, peony dress, Rayne Grace Hoke, Sarah Pabody, Sioux Falls florist, Slowflowers.com, South Dakota-grown flowers, Steve Pabody, Triple Wren Farms, Triple Wren Weddings
For the fifth consecutive year, our Slow Flowers Botanical Couture Collection will feature creativity and fashion with American-grown flowers and foliages — all to celebrate American Flowers Week!
You’ll soon be the first to see our AFW 2020 Botanical Fashion Collection, created over the past year by a talented lineup of Slow Flowers Members around the U.S.
The series will first appear in the June 2020 issue of Florists’ Review, followed by many other platforms and channels. In fact, we’ll soon share American Flowers Week badges for you to download free and use in your own promotion and branding.
Until then, help us thank, congratulate and celebrate our Featured Designers:
ALASKA
Kim Herning of Northern Lights Peonies returns to share her second couture look for American Flowers Week, expressing the unique character and beauty of the peonies she grows. Read more about Kim’s 2019 peony gown here.
Creating the dress was like ‘play day’ for adults. The kind of enthusiasm we all felt generated so much energy and laughter, second only to seeing my fields in bloom.
HAWAII
In 2018, Alison Grace Higgins of Grace Flowers Hawaii in Honokaa, Hawaii, and her team created stunning male and female garments for American Flowers Week to highlight the vibrant diversity of Hawaii-grown flowers and foliages. Read more about Alison’s 2018 tropical couture look here.
For 2020, the designer was inspired by a new floral palette – Hawaii-grown orchids – and a feminine, romantic aesthetic.
I’m so glad we could also show the greenhouses where these flowers come from.
MAINE
Designer Michelle Rech of Electric Flora, based in Portland, partnered with our Slow Flowers sponsor Johnny’s Selected Seeds to create a playful dress adorned with flowers harvested from Johnny’s famous trial gardens in Winslow, Maine.
“Having the opportunity to host a floral fashion designer has been a true highlight for the JSS team,” says Hillary Alger, product manager for herbs and flowers.
“To pause from the busy work of trials and catalog production to participate in something so out of the ordinary stretches our brains in really fun ways.”
Click here to see our 2019 botanical couture look from Johnny’s Seeds, in collaboration with florist Rayne Grace Hoke of Flora’s Muse.
SOUTH DAKOTA
American Flowers Week welcomes a new state and a new look by Moníca Pugh of Floras & Bouquets LLC, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Flower farming is new to South Dakota,” Moníca says. “I’m really hoping that (my participation in) American Flowers week will help get the word out about what’s happening with local flowers.
WASHINGTON
Sarah Pabody of Triple Wren Farms lives and breathes dahlias at the farm she operates with her husband Steve Pabody in the Northwest corner of Washington State (see their family photo above).
As a farmer-florist, she also runs Triple Wren Weddings, a wedding and event design studio. After seeing how popular the farm’s dahlia fields were with local photographers and their portrait clients, Sarah fantasized about what it would look like if the people having their photos taken wore dahlias rather than only standing among the flowers.
GET READY!!!
We’ll share the BIG REVEAL of our 2020 American Flowers Week Botanical Couture collection on June 1st. Stay tuned! In the meantime, EVERYONE is invited to conjure their own American Flowers Week botanical couture wearable, because we hope to flood social media with #americanflowersweek goodness come June 28-July 4! Let your imagination go wild!
