When Doan Ly takes to the stage as the featured speaker at the annual Art in Bloom festival on March 2, her live floral demonstration will be a new experience for her. “I don’t teach classes. I barely teach my designers,” says Ly, founder of a.p. bio designs. “It will be good for me to break down what I do in terms of steps, to articulate those steps, and have a lesson.” The New York-based flower designer and self-taught photographer is known for her creative work with fashion and beauty brands, and for her luscious floral designs for events and weddings. Last year, a selection of her artwork was published in a book titled, Still Life, copies of which Ly will sign following her presentation. Next month’s visit to St. Louis will be Ly’s first time here. The flowers she’ll no doubt shape into arrangements tinged with emotion will be shipped in from New York, but Ly hopes to “swing by and take a look and pick up fun things from the [local] wholesalers, too,” she says. Here, Ly tells us about staying open to inspiration and arranging fuss-free flowers for the home.
I’m sure you get asked this quite a bit, but I’m so curious to know how you discovered your love for flowers?
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I discovered my love for flowers in college. I went to Stanford and the landscape of the area was so inspiring and beautiful. I would go and get a plant and, then, maybe one stem of a flower from the Stanford mall and put it in my dorm room. I realized how much that transformed the space from something that felt drab to something that felt like there was a little love behind it. And it didn’t take much, it was just a little touch that made such a difference. And that has always been my ethos.
I imagine you find inspiration in a lot of different places.
Yes…In fashion and music and theater and film and nature.
When you’re going about your day and you’re very busy, how do you stay open to inspiration?
I think it’s more about freeing space. It’s about making space in your mind. And the minute I’m able to do that it floods in. The way the light is hitting the train or the fruit on the fruit stands in my neighborhood, which is super busy and chaotic. If I’m able to observe I see there’s so much to be curious about.
Why are flowers great storytellers?
They’re accessible in an emotional way. Flowers are an absolute luxury item but they’re also something that’s so imbued in our life experiences and our rituals. There’s something that feels very familiar about flowers to us, I think. And in that way there’s an emotional accessibility to what that flower can convey. A flower image can convey mystery or sadness or longing. I think they can be very poetic and they capture life in this way.
I would imagine that working with flowers has many challenges, on both photo shoots and for events.
There are so many challenges. There’s cost, there’s longevity. It’s a perishable, fragile, expensive item that you have to keep cool and tend to so there’s so much labor involved. And people don’t know why flowers are so expensive for any event, and it’s because they don’t just show up arranged.
You work in a lot of disciplines. Do you have a favorite, whether it’s editorial or events?
I think I thrive when there is a balance of all of that. I think I get a little neurotic and over-fixate if I’m just doing one thing. I love working on weddings because I get to work in such volume. I’m surrounded by so much product and the material is so fun. Then we make this lush world and I get to work with a team and I love my team. I’m lucky enough that I get to choose the designers—we choose each other—and they get to say ‘yes’ to me or ‘no’ to me. Ideally, we’re all there because we want to be there. Granted, we have to make money and it’s not just like ‘yay’ but it’s different from being in an office. I like photography and working on my own work because then I get to really go weird and be very specific and have complete control about the art that comes out of it. That image is mine and I like that aspect of it. The image is so personal and whether it speaks or it doesn’t, it is personal. So, in that, there’s so much reward.
What themes or ideas will you be talking about at your presentation during Art in Bloom?
I think we’re going to do a large-scale arrangement demonstration. I personally thought, ‘Okay, maybe we do like a still-life composition demo, but I think that might be a little too minute. Still life is tedious. I’m moving a tomato like a half an inch over. Everything is just so painstaking that people might feel like they’re at the dentist. I’m like, ‘Let’s just do something that is a little bit more of a feast, a more physical piece.’
