A rose by any name may smell as sweet but they certainly don’t look alike, especially in fashion, writes Aznim Ruhana Md Yusup.
“FLORALS for spring? Groundbreaking!” remarked fictional fashion editor Miranda Priestly in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, dripping with sarcasm. Played to perfection by Meryl Streep, she delivered other truths about the fashion industry.
My personal favourite is the anecdote on the blue – no, make that cerulean blue – sweater worn by Anne Hathaway’s character, detailing the colour’s journey from the runway of Oscar de la Renta before trickling down to department and discount stores.
But how can you not think of florals for spring? That’s easy enough in Malaysia where there’s no actual spring season. I myself only have a vague idea of when spring begins. (Officially, it’s March 21 in the northern hemisphere for 2019.)
Regardless of climate, florals are an enduring motif in fashion and brands are set to welcome spring with flowers and other botanical beauties. So with Spring/Summer 2019 collections about to hit stores, let’s look at some of the season’s best blooms and how they’re interpreted.
THE ENDURING ROSE
Our infatuation with roses goes back a long way. We plant it in our gardens and use the flowers as meaningful gifts. Despite its thorns, we find value in the rose’s beauty and scent. Although fragrance cannot be recreated on fabric, designers do their best to transpose its shape and shade.
Admittedly, roses can seem a bit old-fashioned or perhaps not fashionable at all. It’s too ubiquitous to be unique, and too homely to be edgy. Roses are for romantics, and designers can either embrace this or turn it into something else.
Dolce & Gabbana is the former and they have a longstanding love affair with roses. It’s one of the key themes for the brand’s collection where it comes as large recreations on handbags and garments. Sometimes it is mixed with other flowers such as poppies and hydrangeas to create bold, boisterous prints.
Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton presented roses in unrealistic blue and purple with a metallic finish. It’s part of a collection that plays into a retro space theme, where other images include an LV tower in the clouds and a robot similar to a Star Wars AT-AT walker, drawn in 1970s sci-fi style. Classic roses soften the otherworldly feel, bringing the collection back down to earth.
Richard Quinn manages to make roses both classic and strange, at least in his runway shows. Last September, a model walked out wearing a red rose minidress with an oversized black coat and opaque black leggings with her head and face fully covered. Quinn often shows his models this way and the effect is surreal, like a mannequin that has come to life.
DAISY-ISH CHAINS
To the average person, any flower with a round centre and surrounded by narrow petals is a daisy. This is not technically true, as gerbera, chamomile and several other blooms also come in this form. But I don’t suppose a botanist is going to pick hairs over how regular people describe clothing patterns.
If roses represents romance, then daisies and its ilk signifies innocence, particularly childhood innocence. Notice how kids draw the daisy shape as their go-to flower? Designers love to use this naive, simple drawing as prints.
Miu Miu has a crushed satin dress with an illustrated daisy print, topped off with a rose applique on one of the shoulders. It also showed chrysanthemum prints for Spring, which is similar to the daisy but with bushier petals.
Michael Kors’ colourful Spring collection is centred on a painterly daisy motif in yellow, blue and red. He also did a painted red sunflower print, with the difference being, I believe, that the daisy’s petals are rounder while the sunflower’s are more pointed. It all lends to a cheerful collection, perfect for sunny holidays.
That said, the daisy shape often goes unnamed and placed under the general “floral” description, as seen on garments by Stella McCartney and Simone Rocha. It even appears as mere blobs at Kate Spade New York. So the motif might be wrongly named or not named at all, but it’s still charming and familiar.
POPPY BABY
Meanwhile, petals on poppies are depicted wider and rounder than daisies even though both come with a contrasting centre. It’s often red in colour in real life and can be found growing wild around Europe during the warmer months.
But the poppy is also known for its link to opium. Additionally, countries such as the United Kingdom use poppies in remembrance of soldiers that died during wartime, as can be seen on the chest of Premier League footballers around November. So because the flower is linked with drug addiction and death, fashion with the poppy motif escapes the usual cheerfulness of floral patterns. It’s melancholic and cynical unlike the daisy; edgier and more contemporary, unlike the rose.
This is best seen on designs from Alexander McQueen, where the poppy works well with the brand’s gothic tendencies. One poppy dress shows the full plant over high-low skirt and puffed shoulders. Meanwhile, a ruffled dress may seem congenial and feminine, but McQueen’s use of poppy prints with black undertones hints at something more sinister.
The poppy is also one of the flowers in Gucci’s iconic Flora print, used in everything from handbags to pyjamas. It first appeared as a silk scarf in the 1960s for Monaco’s Princess Grace before being revived in 2005 for the modern shopper. Aside from poppies, the design also includes tulips, daffodils and irises.
TROPICAL THUNDER
But nothing warms the hearts of those living through winter like a good tropical print. For people in Europe and North America, such motifs are exotic and dreamy. It’s true that things are only exotic when they come from far away, but I still love Richard Quinn’s kaftan with the red hibiscus, frangipani blossoms and coconut fronds.
Meanwhile, Christian Siriano opened his Spring/Summer show with a Hawaii-inspired selection. Not that he’d actually been there, telling Vogue.com that he’s too busy to visit the island. Instead, he showed his fantasy of the place with prints of flowering vines and lush foliage.
In Milan, Etro also had a hankering for an island in the sun, with accessories that include shell earrings and necklaces. Other looks include images of palm trees on the hem of trousers, matched with a hibiscus and bird of paradise top.
Meanwhile, Salvatore Ferragamo showed clothes in various shades of brown, perhaps in tribute to the brand’s leather shoemaking heritage. Hence its tropical print is more subdued than what’s normally seen so instead of green, the sansevieria plant is blue while the monstera leaves are brown, which, if happened in real life would horrify foliage lovers.
A saying goes, “A flower doesn’t think of competing with the flower next to it, it just blooms.”
I don’t think that’s true at all given that the actual purpose of flowers, which is to attract pollinators in order to make fertilisation happen so that it can set seeds. I understand what the saying is trying to convey but it makes sense for a flower to be best, the first and the most attractive to pollinators.
Flowers don’t evolve for human beings. Even when we purposefully breed them, we’re just helping them along. Their beauty is transient – my hibiscus only blooms for a day – but they offer so much joy in their short span of existence. It’s no wonder we try to extend their beauty in any way we can.