Florals for spring? Groundbreaking, I know. But what about flower women? At Moschino’s Spring 2018 show, Jeremy Scott dressed Gigi Hadid, Anna Cleveland, Joan Smalls, and Kaia Gerber as actual flowers and floral bouquets.
It was a Surrealist turn that nodded to Franco Moschino’s history of kitsch perversions, but also to some of fashion’s greatest creatives. Look as far back as 1982, and you’ll see that—in addition to bugs, butterflies, and motorcycles—Thierry Mugler dressed his models as painted roses, complete with dragonflies on their heads.
In more recent fashion history, John Galliano transformed Viviane Orth into a carnation and Michelle Alves into an orchid for Christian Dior’s Fall 2010 couture show. (It was Monsieur Dior, after all, who came up with the femme-fleur silhouette, though he never went as far as to dress models as actual flowers.) Alexander McQueen made Tanya Dziahileva into a proper bouquet for his Spring 2007 show, while Christian Lacroix sent out several interpretations of flower ensembles in his Spring 2007 couture collection.
Rather than flowers, Jean Paul Gaultier focused on leaves for his Spring 2002 collection that saw an ivy-covered dress walk down the runway. Still, few flower femmes are as iconic as Laetitia Casta’s turn as an Eve-like bride at Yves Saint Laurent’s Spring 1999 runway show. Clad in a rose-embellished bikini, flower crown, and pink train, she was a bridal vision unlike any other.
