Were florals for spring ever groundbreaking? The blooming romance between flowers and fashion

Were florals for spring ever groundbreaking? Unlikely, for the natural world has appeared on clothing since Ancient Greeks stitched flower motifs into their trims. Thereafter, designers have leant on specific flowers (Lee Alexander McQueen was patron of the rose), paid homage to gardens (see the ‘tangled flowers’ of Highgrove’s Kitchen Garden at Burberry) and cite them as places where creativity blossoms (Simone Rocha names Forde Abbey and Charleston among her favourites). It is no surprise: every season offers new shapes, new curiosities, and enough colour to stock a palette for decades.

Before Burberry and Rocha, there were maidens and medieval knights — the former hand-embroidering and the latter sporting decorated coats and armour to reflect rank and virtue. Patterned silks travelled from China from the 12th century, and sumptuous Italian velvets with luscious florals and fruits threaded with gold and silver later. However, what interested British makers most was not the pattern, but the techniques, and once mastered, they distinguished their craft with a commitment to botanical realism and flora closer to home.

Roses and hedgerow flowers such as Lonicera periclymenum (honeysuckle), Hedera helix (ivy) and Borago officinalis (borage) adorned the garments of Elizabeth I, mirrored among her noblemen. When travel and trade increased, foreign verdure, such as Tulipa from Turkey or Tagetes erecta (marigolds) from Africa were peppered among them, but the most popular were those recognisable by everyman. The sentiment endured, visible in the flourishing popularity of William Morris’s prints taken directly from his garden: ‘Trellis’, his first, from those at Red House in Kent, and ‘Strawberry Thief’, from the thrushes stealing strawberries at Kelmscott Manor. Even his Italian brocade-inspired ‘Wandle’ substituted stylised crowns for chrysanthemums.

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A budding interest in botanicals influenced fashion. When printed herbals arrived in the late 16th century, their content was translated into gardens and onto garments. The sign of a refined Englishwoman was expertise in both. She knew how to tend and use botanicals for her household, and could embroider well. When her craft portrayed accurate depictions, they indicated her knowledge and abilities. Fast-forward to the 20th century, the study of seed catalogues influenced a young Christian Dior so much that, in 1952, he named two couture dresses ‘Vilmorin’ and ‘Andrieux’, titles of French seed producers.

The most successful designers of Georgian Britain, such as Anna Maria Garthwaite, were members of elite botanical societies, granting them access to new cultivars. They formed close relationships with nurserymen, which became quid-pro-quo when the English Landscape Movement ‘banished’ many species from their naturalistic gardens. ‘A rare anemone was then as likely to be sold for the loom or needle as for horticultural display,’ wrote Nicola Shulman, guest-curator of The Garden Museum’s ‘Fashion & Gardens’ exhibition in 2014. In the V&A Museum is a folding fan, dated 1792, illustrated with botanical drawings on the front, and descriptions with other examples that fall into each class on the reverse. It also features lines from Erasmus Darwin’s poem The Botanick Garden (1791).

For Christopher Kane, it was memories of science classes dissecting buttercups and carnations that inspired his Spring/Summer 2014 collection. Skirts were embroidered with botanical diagrams and silky dresses pinned with metal crocodile clips. In case you missed it, he was announced as creative director of Mulberry earlier this year.

Victorians preferred symbolism over science. Floriography was hugely popular and plants became a visual expression of sentiment that social etiquette forbade (a Victorian equivalent of the emoji, one might say). Robinia hispida (pink acacia) indicated elegance; clematis mental beauty (though evergreen clematis inferred poverty); Primula veris (cowslip) winning grace; and orange blossoms purity, particularly popular after Queen Victoria wore them for her wedding in 1840. A book published in 1861 lists Rubus fruticosus (brambles) as lowliness — surely changed by the charm of Morris’s English garden prints, which soon made the exotic blooms look outdated.

What’s luck got to do with it? Plenty, if you are Dior. The Convallaria majalis (lily-of-the-valley), given as a token of luck in France since the 16th century, is a defining figure of the maison. Not only a recurring theme in collections, the designer would tuck fronds into the hems of his models before a show and wore one at all times himself. It continues to bloom among fashion, fragrance, accessories and homeware, paying homage to the flower and the man.

While gardens influenced prints, there are examples of it working in reverse. In the late 16th century, Claude Mollet, premier jardinier du Roy, introduced parterre de broderie, an intricate formal garden style characterised by scroll-like patterns. They were designed to emulate the embroidery edging fine clothes, so when the kings stepped up to their windows, they saw their cuffs mirrored in the landscape and the punctilio of their court carried beyond their palace doors. ‘The intention was to show how nature… could be subdued to a detail on the most domestic and regulated of arts’, Shulman notes. They were also a game of illusion, as rather than being planted with blooms, the ‘flowers’ were ladies of the court walking the pathways, complete with jewelled insects in their hair.

In a similar (though less sinister) way, Dior envisioned his women as flowers, fusing their nature and form. His New Look collection drew directly on floral, not female, figures. Titled Corolle (the ring of petals on a flower), his subjects merged in silhouettes of soft shoulders, nipped waists and blooming skirts. A former Dior employee remarked: ‘The flower woman was born’.

Simone Rocha is inspired by the journey from bud to decay, expressed in a balance of delicate and deconstructed. At present, you’ll find hems shaped like petals, larger-than-life sculpted roses and flowers between layers of tulle referencing their unexpected appearance in rugged landscapes. She echoes McQueen, the fashion rosarian, who saw them as a representation of duality: beauty and life, death and decay. His 2006 Sarabande collection included dresses covered with faux and fresh flowers. Those on the finale look began dropping off as the model walked — an accidental effect, but a moment of serendipitous beauty.

Despite mass-production, florals spurred a respect for craftsmanship. Early textiles required skilled weavers and fine embroidery dextrous hands. Both were time-consuming and costly: a hand-embroidered dress in the 16th century could cost as much as a good-sized house. The Arts-and-Crafts movement of the late 19th century saw lace and home-embroidery flourish (Morris sold ‘work it yourself’ kits), and Liberty’s emphasis on hand-drawn and hand-printed was revered.

Artificial flower-making also thrived. The process involved cutting, pressing and imprinting fabric by hand, then assembling later. In 1891, there were 4,011 flower-makers in London alone. Demand would rocket as the Season began, and black flowers — for which there were designated makers — became a national speciality, feeding the Victorian cult of mourning dress. Today, Paris boasts two of the oldest flower ateliers: Maison Legeron, formerly Guth, established in 1727, and Lemarié, established in 1880 and part of Chanel’s Métiers d’Art since 1996.

When speaking of Chanel, one cannot ignore camellias. It has appeared on the house's haute couture, ready-to-wear and jewellery collections and, most recently, in the form of wild-looking brooches on cardigans. For her, it was a symbol of elegance and simplicity, odourless (so it didn’t compromise Chanel No.5) and entwined in her love affair with Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel. We await Matthieu Blazy’s interpretations with anticipation.

Flowers are synonymous with beauty. When a young Elsa Schiaparelli believed herself to be ugly, she planted seeds inside her nose and ears so they would turn her into a beautiful bouquet. It didn’t work, but wearing them is far more fun anyway.