Our Journal — Les Fleurs

For the month of October we are exploring the language and sentiment of these three floras: Verbena, Lavender, and Rosemary. Why you ask? Well dear loves, it is our small homage to one of our most beloved movies of all time, Practical Magic, a movie about sisterhood, friendships, love, and of course a bit of practical magic all set in an idyllic New England town. Verbena was the name of Sally Owens' beautiful apothecary shop in the movie filled with lotions, balms, and creams she handcrafted with herbs and flowers from her garden. And lavender and rosemary are from the Owens' saying:...

Flowers will remain our main source of inspiration here at Adored Vintage and this week to inspire you, we are sharing the beautiful floral and still life paintings of Scottish artist, Anne Redpath (1895-1965) and a few other women artists who captured the beauty of flowers in their most simple settings, at home, and on your table. Perhaps these painted works will inspire you to create your own floral arrangements for your home to adorn your tables, mantles, and bedside stands. I am someone who is very interested in colour – and by that, I mean bright colour, gay colour; but at the same...

It is no secret that we love flowers here at Adored Vintage and due to a recent winter snow storm and seemingly endless weeks of rain to follow, we have been really craving Springtime blooms and blue skies and just a bit of sunshine in our lives.  Since we couldn't shoot outdoors due to the weather, we decided to create our own woodland meadow for our mini lookbook photoshoot with our model Bailey last week.  For the "Meadow" We used a combination of dried flowers and silk flowers to create the meadow using long foam pieces that are held up by...

This week at the Adored Vintage floral studio I wanted to create a romantic flower arrangement using mostly flowers and greenery that you can easily find in your local grocery shop. This floral arrangement uses pink stock flowers, pale peach carnations, white mini mums, wax flowers, and ferns. You can also add baby's breath for even more daintiness!   What is also wonderful about this arrangement is most of the ingredients will dry quite prettily if you process them before the arrangement gets too wilted. Stock flowers tend to dry very delicately. To dry the flowers, take apart the arrangement and tie...

"Flowers have always been the most important gift of beauty in our perilous and often drab existence, and from the earliest ages they have been endowed with meanings and mystic powers..." A few years ago on one of my many varied antique haunts I came across  a set of paperback books from England featuring flowers that bloom throughout the season. Oh, what an absolute delight it was for me to find this! My collection of floral related books in my "vintage library" is quite small but the books I do have I really adore and wanted to start sharing them...

If you have been following Adored Vintage for awhile, then it is no great secret how much Tasha Tudor has inspired and influenced me. I can't exactly recall when I first saw or heard of Tasha Tudor, though I do recall first seeing a photo of her in her garden and thought someone had colorized a photo from the 1800s. I quickly came to find that the photos were from the 1990s (not the 1890s) and Tasha Tudor was a children's book illustrator and a master gardener who also had a penchant for living her life as if it were...

It will be no surprise to you that flowers is where I draw much of the inspiration for Adored Vintage as well as art and fashion history. I love paintings that depict flowers, women, landscapes, and interiors. So when any combination of these things are in a painting, I am instantly smitten.  Below are some beautiful paintings mostly from the 19th century of women florists or just women with flowers. As Christian Dior said, "After women, flowers are the most divine creations..."    Both paintings above are by French painter Victor Gabriel Gilbert who loved to paint market scenes and everyday life in Paris.  The Language...

I have always delighted in the timeless beauty of flowers and most especially those of dried flowers. As much as I adore fresh flowers...(certain blooms have moved me to near tears!) I find myself always drawn to the everlasting beauty of dried petals and stems... the muted color palettes invite one to glimpse into that particular bloom's past life. And yet still, the blossom is all together lovely and should be appreciated in it's current state. Very much like vintage and antique clothing. I've come across Edwardian dresses that show signs of wear and age, a bit of foxing here, some slightly unraveled threads......

The frost is thawing and the days grow longer. Yet, does it ever seem like this liminal time between Winter and Spring can last for an eternity? As we shift into a new and more colorful chapter of life, the desire to celebrate grows ever stronger...but how, when the timing feels a bit too...just on the cusp of change? Perhaps the frost has been accruing about your winter mind as well and is finally thawing too, and your limbs require a warm-up before they abound for sunny fields. Now is as a good a time as ever to remind yourself to walk, before...