Flowers for my hair 👑

Unlearning the proper rules of floristry, one flower crown at a time

There’s two things about me that have never changed: I don’t wish to blend in and I like having flowers in my hair.

I’d been working in a flower shop for two or three years when I finished secondary school. With prom looming I started planning the most outrageous outfit. I’d learnt loads in the florist, but I’d never really made a flower crown before. Nicky, who specialised in wired wedding work, offered to make one for me.

Me and my mum went dress shopping. Boring dress after bland dress, I was despairing. The only shop left in Nottingham was the weird goth shop my mum had hurried me past. Within five minutes of being in that shop I found my dress. It was black, obviously, with a fluorescent pink netting underneath. Velvet and short, with little satin bows on each of the capped sleeves.

‘I don’t know why we even bothered going to the other shops. You were obviously going to buy a dress like this.’ My mum had said. 

A pair of New Rock boots were my chosen shoe of choice. The platforms were inches thick. I threaded metres of pink ribbon through the eyelets. The ribbon really made the metal capped toes pop. To match my freshly dyed black hair I clipped in pink hair extensions and made a choker out of pink satin. My eyes were outlined with thick black eyeliner and my eyebrows were plucked into oblivion. 

The outfit’s crowning glory was my flower crown. It was full of pink roses, the brightest the wholesaler could source. Little pink nerines were used throughout. Nerines have six thin petals, nearly as thin as my eyebrows, that curl back on themselves. They almost look like dead spiders.

Nicky had plucked all the petals from several pink germinis. This left a perfect circle of black lined with the tiniest pink petals. Pieces of greenery were laced throughout. The photos are old so I can’t make out what type of greenery was used.

When I collected it, hours before prom, my colleagues told me how Nicky had spent nearly all day working on it. Each flower had been individually wired and taped before binding them together in a circlet.

I felt invincible. In my velvet dress, clompy boots and pink flower crown I thought I’d take over the world.

Flower crowns definitely had their day. They’re made with a technique called wiring which is often seen as tired and too traditional nowadays. Crowns became the thing for festivals and then weddings. But most of the requests I get for crowns now are for flower girls. Which are super cute, but I think flower crowns as we knew them are falling out of favour.

Since launching my business I’ve been busy unlearning so much of what I learnt at that flower shop. As an Interflora florist you had to make everything look like it had been copied and pasted from the same image. At floristry college you were taught the Right Way of doing things and it’s been hard to shake this.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered there was more than one way to make a flower crown.

The trick was to use a headband and floral glue. I turned a large glass vase upside and used duct tape to keep the headband in place. My hands were sticky and filthy, and the back of the headdress was a jungle of stems.

When I put the headdress on I felt like I was that 16 year old Sarah, the Queen of the Prom with the most magnificent flowers in her hair. Unlearning all strict rules of Proper Floristry is hard work, but oh so rewarding.

With love,

Sarah x