From the bright colours to the floral patterns and billowy shapes, there is something about summer vibes and the vibrant era of the 1950s that seems to gel in our creative little minds. So when this year’s theme of the London Summer Event Show was announced to be a fifties British tea party, our hearts skipped an excited beat!
In our opinion, the fifties in the summertime is the ultimate theme for a fantastic floral event. (Although thinking about it, the 80s would also have been a joyful challenge: we will have to tackle that particular era next time…).
The 1950s was a pivotal decade in British social history; a time when the nation regained a sense of security, rose above the uncertainty of the 1940s and heralded a new era of peace. Despite the remnants of a post-war Britain still fresh in people’s minds, an overwhelming sense of hope began to blossom as cities and towns started to rebuild, communities were restored, and their residents began to reclaim their sense of identity.
Our 50s inspiration
What our land could provide freely was the inspiration for the fruit and floral prints on wallpaper and fabrics. Repeat patterns, mixing pastels with bold colours, as well as full and rounded voluminous shapes alongside an overall idea of fun was something we really wanted to capture within our event flower designs.
To celebrate the spirit of Britain in the 1950s, we decided to create a dress made entirely of fresh flowers; thereby showcasing Hybrid’s passion for colour and detail by replicating a much-loved vintage fabric pattern. With these ideas fresh in our minds we donned our snow boots (did we mention the London Summer Event Show is in January?) and began to trawl Soho’s theatrical fabric shops looking for the perfect repeat floral.
Our retro repeat floral fabric pattern needed to complement the red, white and blue of More Production’s street party theme but we also wanted it to represent the vivid colours that were abound in the blousy garden blooms of the era. To cut a long story short, after a fair few miles spent traversing the streets of Soho, we finally found it….
The easy bit
At the risk of sounding OTT, we have no qualms in stating that matching a theme with real-life fresh flowers is our favourite thing of all time! To make our dream 1950s floral dress, we needed our choice of flowers to lay as flat as possible in order to recreate the flow of the fabric folds that define a voluptuous 50s style dress. We found that beautifully scented spray roses were the perfect choice and the fact they were fair-trade was an added bonus. Complementing these roses with the tone of the peachy hypericum gave us the floral pattern whilst creamy white chrysanthemums, a very 50s bloom, served as the perfect background colour for our daring dress.
We called her Doris
Curves and shapes formed the foundation of our 1950s style floral dress and to achieve this fantastic floral figure we relied upon lots of chicken wire and our trusty sewing machine. In this manner Doris, the perfect hostess for our 1950s British tea party, was created! The result was someone we all wanted to cuddle. She stood high up in the middle of Banking Hall looking gorgeous and attracting many admirers.
Inspired by this thrilling 50s tea party theme, we decided to carry through these classic style influences into our Floral Adornment Master Class. Events professionals and esteemed clients alike were invited to try their hand at creating their very own wired corsages using matching flowers to our darling Doris.
Some wonderful visitors from across the big wide world of events planning gathered together within this master class to share their unique stories and interests. Many of our visitors enthused about how they found themselves ‘calming down’ and achieving a sense of wellbeing through the process of wiring each rose and leaf with love and attention.
A lovely opportunity for a good old fashioned natter among some fellow floral enthusiasts; the spirit of the 1950s was alive and well!