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It started by accident! I was an English major in college, and I sincerely loved the work. In a different life, I might have gone on to get a PhD in Early American or Medieval Literature, but I took some time after college to work. Let me tell you, the world was not stoked about hiring me at the time. After 2 or 3 months of unsuccessful applications and interviews, my parents gave me a deadline: “Figure out how to get out on your own by September, please and thanks!” It was actually my mom who suggested, on a whim, “You know you have retail experience and you’re creative. Maybe a flower shop is hiring.” Well, I took that advice straight to Google and found two shops that were hiring. About a week later, I was working for a florist in Greenwich, CT, and somehow almost 10 years have passed since!
As the Design Manager, I personally design every bouquet and plant offering in our seasonal floral collections. We rotate collections about 7 times a year, so it’s quite a project, but it’s one that I really adore. We plan our collections about 9-12 months in advance; for example, I was in Miami in December 2024 working with our partners to design the floral collections for Winter 2025, the December Holidays, and Valentine’s Day of 2026. I also have the pleasure of taking on floral activations (we popped up at SXSW with The Female Quotient and with Little Words Project for Mother’s Day), and I make semi-regular appearances on our company’s social media as well. Really, it’s a dream job and I feel so grateful to do it. I spend my days dreaming about flowers, and I work with a team of some of the most amazing women I’ve ever met.
Ok, I should say first that we’re really lucky to work in NYC because a) we get access to incredibly unique floral products from around the world! Plus, b) there’s a broad (and transparently wealthy) client base in NYC that allows us, as artists, to utilize really unique and interesting stems. Of course, no shade to commodity stems – roses and carnations are wonderful, highly versatile flowers – but knowing we can also work with scapes, funny looking allium, eremerus lilies, branches, pods, all the weird and wonderful stuff of Mother Nature; is a dream.
More importantly, though, I am obsessed with the people! Honestly, one of my favorite things about this industry (specifically in NYC), is that so many of the brilliant designers and artists working right now are women and queer folks. Whether we’re partnering with another company for an event buildout (e.g. Dead Flowers NYC, led by Laurel St. Romain) or whether I’m just admiring from afar (e.g. Putnam Flowers), it fills me with such pure joy to know that I’m among my people. At the risk of sounding a little “woo-woo,” I really think flowers have helped me find where I belong.
This is an amazing question, and it has everything to do with customer interface and the production timeline. Most floral designers work directly with their clients much closer to the date of delivery. They have to work up proposals, source product, negotiate pricing, and finally design (and possibly deliver / install) the florals. By contrast, I work much more like a fashion designer! I work closely with our supply chain team and the farms that supply our flowers to design seasonal collections of bouquets almost a year ahead of time. I hand-select each stem, down to the specific color and variety, and then build prototypes or “recipes” for our designs. When it comes time to deliver, our incredible farmers produce and arrange the florals into bouquets according to my design and specifications. Then, they lovingly box them up and transport them in their thousands to the states. From there, we work with a number of partners to get the flowers to your door. In a way, I feel more distant from my customers than when I worked in flower shops, but it’s amazing to think folks all across the country are connecting and sharing love with my designs.
It would be dishonest not to admit that a notable chunk of the work is Instagram stalking. I think studying the work of other designers (in the floral world and beyond) is crucial to learn, to refresh your well of inspiration, and make sure you’re not stuck in a single mode. So, I do a lot of collecting “floral inspo” (that’s what the folder on my desktop is called) and organizing by season or theme.
Once it’s time to focus on designing for a specific season, I begin by researching trend reports or predictions for the season. I try my best to pull out key colors, textures, or themes for the time of year into 2-3 “stories.” From there, I support my stories with inspirational images and lists of the flower types I want to use for that season and story. Each story has specific color families, key floral stems, and thoughts on what kinds of vases work well with those florals. Once the vision is solidified, I work with our incredible merchants to align on a line plan for the season. Then it’s time to get our hands a little dirty.
Twice a year, we convene with our farm partners in Miami (the biggest port of entry for flowers in the USA) or in South America for “Design Day,” which we really should call design week. We design 3 collections at a time, e.g. Spring, Mother’s Day, Summer, and design dozens more bouquets than we eventually bring to market. From all the possibilities, we eventually edit down to a focused seasonal collection. That’s a really tidy summary of a very long process, but getting to work with flowers and with my incredible colleagues makes it deeply fulfilling.
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