american flowers week ~ June 28 to July 4 ~ Celebrating American Grown Flowers in all 50 States

Susan McLeary’s Design Evolution

Ten years ago, we asked Ann Arbor, Michigan-based floral designer Susan McLeary to create a signature floral headpiece to celebrate American Flowers Week.

Her eye-catching flower ‘fro, modeled by Monique Montri, was both creatively satisfying to produce.“I spent about 30 minutes making a heavy-duty flower crown, for which I had to wire each stem to make sure it was sturdy enough. Then, I spent another 40 minutes adding individual flowers to Monique’s hair. We teased out her hair so it had more structure to hold the flowers,” McLeary told American Flowers Week at the time.

Photographed by Amanda Dumouchelle and styled by McLeary, the project became an iconic image across our American Flowers Week promotions. Her impeccable look inspired a decade of botanical couture looks that followed: Garments, ensembles, and accessories created by Slow Flowers members and farmer-florist teams across the U.S. Since 2016, we have celebrated an impressive lineup of 48 American Flowers Week botanical couture looks, designed by our members with domestic flowers and foliage as the inspiration. These floral fashions hail from across the continent — Alaska and Hawaii; Maine and Florida; Missouri and South Dakota and beyond.

In considering the important influence that McLeary’s flower ‘fro brought to this campaign and to the floral artists who followed in her footsteps, we invited the Slow Flowers leader to discuss the evolution of her style. McLeary is the author of The Art of Wearable Flowers (Chronicle Books, 2020) and she teaches extensively through her online platform at susanmcleary.com.

SFJ: Sue, tell us about your first wearable floral piece and what inspired you to design it?
SM: I think it was probably with Françoise Weeks in California at a Chapel Designers Conference where she was teaching, 2012 or 2013. It was something beyond a corsage or beyond a crown.

SFJ: What did that experience reveal to you, or unlock in your imagination?
SM: I started figuring out that I could use the techniques I used to make jewelry – very simple techniques.  Françoise showed me the example that you can really express yourself in whatever way you want with flowers. I was new in my learning and this was really exciting to see someone making things that really don’t have a lot of commercial purpose. It was art. And that was the purpose. And that, obviously, was hugely valuable to me.

SFJ: You’ve been redefining wearable florals ever since!
SM: I love to take a topic or something that is either a pain point or a stumbling block and try to think through all the possible iterations until I can come up with something I think is a useful improvement. With wearables, I guess the purpose for me is that I want people to just enjoy the flowers while they’re here and kind of detach from the obsession with longevity that I think has done damage to our industry. Like the whole vase life conversation and the consumer thinking that a flower is only valuable if it sits in a vase for 10 days. I want to throw that all out of the window and say: “Enjoy this right now for art’s sake. For joy.”

SFJ: Can you tell us about one of your most recent wearable floral designs?
SM: There’s kind of a pattern where I like to fix on something and I’m there for a while! What happened recently was (when) I was designing my daughter’s prom flowers. She didn’t think she wanted a corsage; she thought she wanted a bouquet, but she had this really cool dress with lots of handmade details. So I wanted to make a light armature that held the flowers, but didn’t feel heavy. I wanted to make a little accessory like a jewelry piece. That led me to testing out various ways to float flowers in midair.

SFJ: How did you approach this challenge?
SM: I’ve always loved armature work. But armatures, as they were taught to me, always felt like they weren’t commercially relevant or aesthetically relevant. So I wanted to test out my concept and take away as much of the bulk of the mechanic as I could, leaving enough support to show the flowers. This was how my obsession started, and it continues! I am thinking about how to get rid of glue. How to get rid of tape. Corsage tape is plasticky, a throwaway item. Florists wire, as it is sold, is also plastic-coated and it’s not good looking on its own, so I’ve found it really exciting to think of armatures and supports that can eliminate those products.

SFJ: Clearly your thinking has evolved over the past decade. How might you approach designing your Flower ‘Fro today, in 2025? Would you want to find a way to “float” those red-white-and-blue flowers above Monique’s head?
SM: The Afro is a mass design because all of the flowers are cut and manipulated to make one form. I think we swing back and forth as florists. Sometimes, we go really dense and decorative – that’s a mass design — and then we swing to really minimal, light, and kind of Ikebana-inspired.

SFJ: That seems to be where you are now, right?
SM: Yes, I really enjoy working with negative space and transparency, using the least amount that I need to get the point across, to get the impact, I guess. And then, thinking about the forms and the lines that flowers create. I think the exciting thing that’s going to be explored more and more is form-linear work, as opposed to the vegetative, uber-natural design style or the mass decorative design.

SFJ: Can you describe form-linear a little more?
SM: It’s very spare and it’s all about the forms in nature and about asymmetry. In form-linear, the materials are selected and they’re placed in a way so you can see the form and line of each element. And there’s a lot of negative space around them. You could say that Ikebana is form-linear design, too.

SFJ: We watch your Instagram feed where you’re showcasing wearable flowers with beautiful, form-linear techniques!
SM: Definitely! It’s exciting for me to think of ways to teach armatures that are approachable for a new florist, so they can see the breadth of what’s available to them and put all of these ideas in their toolkit. It’s an approachable technique, not one where you’re wiring and taping for three hours to make a bridal bouquet, but instead, you have this simple armature that you know how to make. It creates an impactful result, without the extraneous waste.

SFJ: If you were to redesign the 2015 Flower ‘Fro with today’s Sue McLeary armature techniques, I could see it still framing Monique’s head like a beautiful halo, but in a form-linear style, right?
SM: (Laughs) I think it would be more transparent! I want more negative space. I want the flowers to each have their own spatial plane, with movement and interest. Remember, the Flower ‘Fro was for a photo shoot, so Monique didn’t have to walk or be on a runway. I’m more conscious of things being practical or wearable these days, more than just for a photo shoot setting. So I would want the headpiece to have a little more underneath structure if I recreated it.

SFJ: What else can you share about your philosophy of wearable flowers or botanical couture?
SM: I want my pieces to have a lot of motion. I don’t like anything to feel dense or heavy, typically. I take a lot of videos now. I take photos, of course, but in my daily sharing, it’s always video, because motion is so interesting to me.