Susan McLeary - The Art of Wearable Flowers: Floral Rings, Bracelets, Earrings, Necklaces, and More

To my children, Leda and Maceo, and to all the flower lovers that hold this book in their hands: in floristry as in lifecreate that which you crave to see.

Copyright 2020 by Susan McLeary.

Photography copyright 2020 by Amanda Dumouchelle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: McLeary, Susan, author. | Dumouchelle, Amanda, photographer
Title: The art of wearable flowers / Susan McLeary ; photographs by Amanda Dumouchelle.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2020] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019015726 | ISBN 9781452175874 (hardcover : alk. paper); ISBN 9781452179339 (epub, mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Floral decorations. | Dress accessories
Classification: LCC SB449.48 .M35 2020 | DDC 745.92--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019015726

Design by Vanessa Dina.
Typsetting by Howie Severson.

Photographs by Amanda Dumouchelle.

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

Many of us know Susan McLeary as Passionflower Sue, the Instagram handle she adopted for her Ann Arbor, Michiganbased studio, originally named after the tropical vine Passiflora caerulea.

Passion is a fitting adjective for Sue, and I am reminded of my favorite garden quote from Karel apeks The Gardeners Year, published in 1929: Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which [we give our] heart.

Indeed, the generous creative whose book you hold in your hands has given over her heart to the practice of making beauty informed by botany.

I first met Sue in 2014 at a Chapel Designers conference in New York City when founder Holly Chapple invited me to speak about the Slow Flowers movement. Susan brought a few of her intricate succulent jewelry pieces to share at the event, and I was immediately mesmerized by them. Like Susan, I was a bit of a fashionista, having earned my undergraduate degree in textiles and clothing and worked at Seventeen magazine as a junior editor in my early years after college.

Our friendship was forged, and the following year we reconnected at Lisa Wauds Detroit Flower Week, where Sue led a design team to transform an elderly kitchen into a fantasy floral setting that enchanted thousands of visitors over the three-day exhibition. Thats when I first interviewed Sue for an episode of my Slow Flowers podcast.

In 2016, I asked Sue if she would accept a commission to create a signature headpiece for the second annual American Flowers Week, a Slow Flowers campaign. She jumped right into the assignment, designing a red-white-and-blue flower fro using all domestic US-grown flowers. Modeled by Monique Montri and photographed by Amanda Dumouchelle, the powerfully feminine piece symbolized all that I dreamed for the flower promotion campaignand images from that project continue to be posted and shared to this day. (You can learn to make your own flower fro on .)

Sues personal belief that artists, designers, and florists must create the art they want to see in the world has made a great impression on me and on tens of thousands of her followers. In early 2017, I had just begun to contribute articles to Florists Review magazine, and the Creativity issue was scheduled for March 2017. Travis Rigby, the magazines new owner and publisher, asked me for suggestions, and I blurted out: Lets profile Susan McLeary on her creative process.

By then, Sue had a significant fan base on social media and as a design teacher, especially for her unique floral wearables and succulent jewelry. And while her work had been published in European floral publications, the mainstream floral marketplace hadnt fully discovered her incredible artistic talents. Im so pleased that Travis and editor David Coake agreed to my proposed profile of Sue.

We recorded the interview when she came to my hometown to teach a wearable jewelry workshop for the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. And in true Susan McLeary fashion, rather than providing a photo gallery of her past design work to accompany my story, she conjured up an entirely new body of wearable pieces, featuring a new palette, new flowers, and new shapes. She again collaborated with photographer-partner Amanda Dumouchelle to present fresh, modern fashion and flower-forward wearables to Florists Review readers. We titled the article A Curious Creative, and the ten-page spread featured exciting, convention-breaking looks, including a crescent bouquet, a floral bib, a three-way floral sash, and a dramatic, Cleopatra-style headdress. Sue wanted the images to reflect her philosophy that one must create and design in response to what one craves to see in the marketplace.

Her urge to share continues, and it is my desire that you will be entirely delighted with Sues inventive and intricate approach to making floral couture accessories, jewelry, and wearable pieces. The Art of Wearable Flowers reveals her truly contagious passion on every page.

Sues practice of openly sharing ideas and skills follows the advice she expressed to my readers in that Florists Review article: It feels so much better when you let your creativity out into the world. I believe that if you do this, more will return to you. If you hold it in, youre holding so tight that you cant absorb new information.

The greatest reward Sue will receive from having produced this magical and inventive book, into which she has poured years of experience in passionately satisfying her artistic curiosity, is to see you take these projects and concepts and make them your own. Use the techniques, methods, and advice; the designer secrets, proven tips, and lessons learnedand give yourself permission to aspire and elevate botanical wearables to reflect your own personality and imagination.

May the spirit of creativity and curiosity found in these pages be infectiousand send you on your own passionate journey. It will be a joyous and satisfying one.

DEBRA PRINZING
Founder and creative director of Slow Flowers Society

slowflowerssociety.com

I was a late bloomer when it came to floral design (pardon the pun). Ive always been vaguely creative; I can remember spending hours on end as a child, sketching, beading, building elaborate fairy villages in the woods outside my home, and creating doll clothing. As a teen, I became obsessed with fashion and turned magazine cuttings from Vogue, Elle, and W into an enormous collage that covered my bedroom walls. I pored over these magazines, studying the haute couture work of revolutionary designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler, and Christian Lacroix. But although I could be utterly consumed with a given creative obsession, I never pursued any of them seriously enough to imagine that one day Id have a career in the arts. It was entirely by chance that I found this work.

After many years spent traveling, working as a line cook, waitress, and restaurant manager, and halfheartedly exploring possible careerschef and physical therapist being the most promising prospectsI found myself back in my hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, finishing a bachelor of science degree and making jewelry for friends and for sale at a local boutique. I was in my late twenties, and many of my friends and acquaintances were getting married. Word of my jewelry-making hobby got out, and I started to receive requests to create jewelry pieces for local weddings. One friend asked me to make jewelry for herself and her bridesmaids, and as we talked, she confided that she hadnt yet hired a florist. Her wedding was just a few months away, and it was clear she was concerned about this missing detail. I can still recall her exact words as she grasped my arm and asked me if I would be her florist: Youre creative; you can probably do this!