Spring/Summer 2021

In an April 1873 letter to Frances and Louise Norcross, botanist and poet Emily Dickinson writes:

“The career of flowers differs from ours only in inaudibleness. I feel more reverence as I grow for these mute creatures whose suspense or transport may surpass my own.”

What a perfect phrase—The Career of Flowers!— as delightfully balanced as caramel and flaked sea salt, unassumingly buried between the banalities of conversation. Since encountering this line I’ve found it rather difficult to move on, releasing my head to the clouds while a four-word phrase crescendoed along into hundreds of sketches and hours of experimentation. While floral motifs are a time-honored clothing tradition, could I offer a sartorial microphone to the flowers themselves?

The foundational elements of flower-clothes-making are simple: resin-cast pressed botanicals before linking them into wearable arrangements. Like molecules bonding into structures, or pixelated words scrolling endlessly across a marquee, repetition proves a powerful concept. A dress made from 210 pansies and three yards of an accordion-pleated bamboo fiber crepe, or a purse made from forty-eight linked daisies-- will the acquisition of one of these pieces help the wearer to experience human connection differently?

Remind me, what is it like to look into the eyes of forty-eight daisies and twenty-six strangers each time you sit down onto a crowded subway car and drop your bag into your lap? How is it to sing and dance with friends, wearing a tank top made of 212 flowers while holding a half-eaten stone fruit? Is it sartorial, romantic, mathematical?

As I set my flowers free, I hope you’ll enjoy the outputs of this research— utilitarian examples of a world cultivated by, through, and using botanicals, worn to experience the ways plants enable us to feel more human. For now you can call it fashion, but maybe freedom is what we’re craving.

--Olivia Cheng, Dauphinette Founder and Chief Creative Officer