I met two very stylish women at the Designer’s Guild store in The King’s Road this week, founder Tricia Guild (left above) and Juliet Glaves (right) of Thoughtful Flowers. Both are brilliant with colour and form and as a sort of mini Chelsea-Flower-Show–homage, tried really hard to teach me how to tie an artful bouquet (we all know that’s not going to go well) at Juliet’s pop-up flower space in shop’s courtyard.
Juliet grows all her own flowers in the UK, and all the flowers you see in the post were grown either on her Ludlow flower farm or in Cambridge. She used to work for the BBC producing programmes -a few with Sarah Raven, who was a big influence -but had a lightbulb moment seven years ago where she decided to abandon her career and start again with flowers.
Juliet’s flowers lead a ‘normal life’, in that they are not hot housed, forced or flown in from Kenya on an hourly basis, ‘Our flowers have beautiful imperfections and you’ll find the odd ladybird and spider in amongst the blooms’ she told us. Thoughtful Flowers does events and I think I might have to throw a special party just so I can get Juliet to do the flowers, they really are beautiful.
Juliet’s floral handwriting has an easy, sculptural feel, with a deceptively simple placement style. Because the flowers have such character, the arrangements have real personality. Her displays were placed around the store and the whole place looked amazing. This week I’d quite like to be a florist, although Juliet say’s it’s hard work and far from some field-skipping, away-with-the-fairies vision I imagine. She’s currently pondering how to keep a whole field of foxgloves from flowering before a June wedding, ‘I have no idea what we’ll do if they flower now” she said, looking quite panicky.
The flowers were a natural fit with Tricia’s floral fabric designs, which looked stunning in her store. It’s ages since I’d been into the Designers Guild store and it really is heavenly, Tricia’s way with colour is super-inspiring and even if the prices are out of reach, its a free inspiration-show just wandering around the store. This is definitely one of those shops I’d like to move into. How fab is the aged floral mirror below? It has faded flowers imprinted somehow onto the surface. can we do this at home?
Tricia was wearing a Dosa dress, with a scarf from Rumal Pero which she sells in the store. I found a similar one, below, on the shop floor which is a blue and red woven and embroidered number, light and airy with tiny trinkets dangling along the hem, it’s absolutely lovely.
I’m just going to let you look at the pictures now, so enjoy.
Nice mats, eh?
The stationery is definitely worth investigating.
If you are London based, Juliet’s pop up florist will be in the store until the flowers run out (probably around Saturday this week). If not, check out the websites of both
Thoughtful Flowers and Designers Guild. Check out Tricia’s Designers Guild blog here too.
