Human Flower Project

Friday, July 21, 2006

Tara Wears Size 3500

Announcing the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest flower show, a supermodel puts on petals.

Model Tara Moss walks the talk

Photo: ABC

It’s the oldest and the most irresistible come on of all time: a big, beautiful female body plus flowers, bright red ones in this case.

Floriade, the monster springtime flower and garden show in Canberra, Australia, is nearly a month off, but the attention seeking has begun. Yesterday, Canadian model Tara Moss put on, rather uncomfortably it appears, a rose petal dress and vogued for publicity shots to announce the 2006 event.

That’s quite a lure, and of course we’re biting.

Floriade will run September 16 through October 15 and is expected to bring about 300,000 visitors to Canberra’s Commonwealth Park. This year’s event highlights internationalism, with 16 special garden beds for nations with outstanding floral festivals of their own, among them Colombia, Turkey, Spain, and Japan.

Tara Moss holds up well

Photo: Canberra Times

It took floral designer Susie Dunn 12 hours to assemble Moss’s dress, perhaps longer than anticipated. Moss, 6’1”, noted,  “They originally had two thousand rose petals [on the dress] but then they realised how tall I was – we now have 3 thousand rose petals that make up this dress.” Ah, Tara, we’re all prone to a bit of subtraction under these circumstances; the Floriade press office says 3500 petals went into your costume.

An experienced fashion model (also a crime fiction writer, we learn), Moss put on a big smile but seemed a bit uneasy in her all-floral garb. In several photos, she’s wrapped one arm strategically about her waist. It’s been awhile, but we recognize that pose: from the first time we wore a strapless bra.