Human Flower Project

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Forego Flowers at Your Own Risk

Critic bashes YSL’s new fashion line, saying lack of flowers means haute couturier has fallen tres flat.

Yves St. Laurent’s house of fashion has been an exuberant trendsetter since he went out on his own, in 1962. But ooh-la-la, in today’s Washington Post Robin Givhan derides the new designs by Stefano Pilati for Rive Gauche, calling them everything but frump-a-delic. And what more damning evidence than the lack of fresh flowers at the runway show.

Givhan waxes nostalgic about earlier days. “With its black, acrylic invitations that arrived tucked into a box akin to a thin black cigarette case, YSL set itself apart. The show was held each season in a specially constructed auditorium in the garden of the Rodin Museum. The approach was lined with sexy young men in dark Saint Laurent suits with their lapels turned up. YSL wasn’t making a profit, but its owners were spending money on enormous vases of fresh flowers, waiters passing flutes of champagne, perfume-scented air.”

Brighter Days, Yves St. Laurent dress, 1998
Photo: The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs

In contrast, Givhan suffers sensory deprivation at the event introducing the 2005 line. “As YSL President Mark Lee said just before Pilati’s debut, ‘It’s a new day.’ The setting was the old Paris stock exchange—a location that suggested the evening was about commerce, not art. No Saint Laurent boys lurked in the shadows. No flowers. No booze. Just Lee greeting guests outside in the chilly night air. YSL has stopped pretending that it is successful, unique, unparalleled. This show made one feel as though it was just any other brand struggling toward reinvention.”

Another Frenchman, Pierre Bourdieu, pointed out in his masterful study Distinction that staking the highest claim of cultural significance (being a grand fromage) requires distancing oneself from stolid institutions and, especially, from the mundane world of commercial interest. To be a cultural meteor means flying above (or below) these ordinary realms. YGAD! Now YSL wants to make a profit! Its new directors may have mistaken the fashion world for an ordinary economy. Penny wise, peony foolish.

Organic? Get Down to Seed

A Santa Fe-based company scours the world for organic seed, the building block of organic gardening.

When I see “organic” at the vegetable or flower market, I think about compost v. Ortho. But an article in Saturday’s (Santa Fe) New Mexican has changed that. It reports on Seeds of Change, a company that collects and sells organic seed.

What’s that mean? Bob Quick’s article explains, “Unlike most conventional seed companies, which sell hybrid and genetically modified seeds, Seeds of Change seeds are open pollinated and will reproduce true to form, meaning seeds from the parent plant are viable, unlike that of hybrid seeds.” Hybrid seed may be sterile or produce flowers that bear little resemblance to their parent.

Until recently, growers could sell their produce as “organic” based solely on how they manage pests and fertilize the soil. But in 2001 new federal National Organic Standards were passed, that require organic seed too.

HFP readers will be especially interested in Seeds of Change’s online catalogue of organic flower seed. Warning, they’ve run out of Sweet Pea seed!

Note: For now, anyway, the Human Flower Project has no commerical purpose. Neither am I vouching for this product or any other—just conveying information. Another form of “open-pollination.” Diverse (and divergent) opinions/suggestions are always welcome.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Industry Parades on the Faces of Floral Clocks

Emblems of humankind’s dominion over nature, floral timepieces look kitschy, out of sync with today.

If there’s anything that doesn’t watch the clock, it’s flowers. Like people, they bloom and die on an unpredictable schedule, determined by water, warmth, food, daylight and a whole lot of something else. Karma.

But in the 19th and 20th Centuries, landscapers and town planners, enthralled with industrial power, wanted to broadcast another notion. If people could be herded into offices, factories and mills and forced to punch the clock, why not flowers? To symbolize modern-day efficiency (and keep everyone running on schedule), they built huge public clocks adorned with flowers. The faces of these giant sloped timepieces were covered with annuals, routinely planted, stripped away, and replaced with new blooms.

The floral clock of Alexandria, Egypt

One of the earliest floral clocks was the centerpiece of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.  “Once a minute, the master clock released a puff of compressed air strong enough to move a hand of the floral clock 5 feet, which designated one minute.”

The thought of combining puffing machinery with 10,000 petunias now seems surreal and campy. It’s easy to condescend to pop culture of the past. But its crazy juxtaposition—and the blatant message of dominion over nature—are a lot less sinister than the bio-engineered foods and flowers we have today. At least the old industrial ideologues felt some compunction to made their politics public.

I hope you’ll enjoy HFP’s brief tour of floral clocks. And please send your recommendations of other ticking gardens.

The Floral Clock at Kentucky’s State Capitol, Frankfort

The Floral Watch of Geneva, Switzerland

Modesto, California, flower clock Check out the live action cam!!

Floral Clock in Niagara Falls, Ontario

Floral Clock, Taronga Park Zoo, Australia

Floral Clock of Edinburgh, Scotland

Detroit (Michigan) Water Works Floral Clock
Later moved to Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village

Saturday, October 09, 2004

Less Scarcity, More Peace

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a Kenyan environmentalist.

Do flowers and plants have anything to do with world peace? The Nobel Prize committee thinks so, and has made this year’s award accordingly.

Dr. Wangari Maathi, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, explains. “People are fighting over water, over food and over other natural resources….  In managing our resources and in sustainable development, we plant the seeds of peace.”

Maathi led women in Kenya to plants millions of trees, “to combat deforestation and to replenish the source of fuel for cooking fires,” reports today’s New York Times. A biologist, Dr. Maathai has also worked for women’s rights and democracy in Kenya.

Ole Danbolt Mjoes, who chaired the Nobel awards committee, spoke out bluntly about this marked change in the interpretation of “peace.” “It is clear that with this award,” said Mjoes, “we have expanded the term ‘peace’ to encompass environmental questions related to our beloved Earth.’”

That sort of expansion—that sees how the realm of human action, intelligence, morality, and emotion intersects with the world of flowering plants—is what the Human Flower Project is all about.

Kenyan flower seller Photo, YaleGlobal Online

Note: Cut-flower exports make up Kenya’s third largest industry—after tourism and tea. But in Kenya, as in many other countries, the cut-flower industry hasn’t proven to be a strong sector for improving the lives of people. Check out this article from Yale’s Center for the Study of Globalization.