Inside Fashion Florist Christie Leigh's East London Studio

Having my own studio space is so important. It's where I design most of my work, where I have my thoughts, where I like sit. Sometimes I just sit in here. I come here pretty much every day and there's lots of other artists in this building. There's lots of various different crafts and there's like fashion designers and painters and ceramicists. So it's quite a nice creative hub. Neva's pretty much always here. She's like my little friend, my studio buddy. I think I've always wanted to be a florist, but I didn't know that I could make it as a career and cross over my degree with design and illustration. I hadn't really thought about how I marry those things together. And then before I became a florist, I was a model for years. So working in fashion and then marrying that with my design degree and then throwing in nature and floristry, it sounds mad, but that seemed to completely click and make sense to me. So I did have to learn a lot about flowers. I mean, I'm a nerd anyway, so it was totally fine for me. And also when I was growing up, my mum was a florist when I was little. You have to know how long a flower will last, like certain types of flowers, how they sit in vases, how their stems move. It's really tricky because they die and they wilt and they move and they change. But that's part of the reason why they're so wonderful to work with. It's perishable and it's instant and then it's gone and it's quite beautiful. I really like working with sort of like the kind of higher fashion brand clients. So, for example, I did a job with Loewe for their handbags and it had my flowers in, which was really, I was really proud of that. And it's quite nice to have something in print that you can say, that's mine and I did that. So I remember being a kid and my mum, she did sort of kind of that forestry with like oasis stuff. It was the 80s, 90s, so I think it was quite peak sort of home and garden kind of vibes, where it was like DIY, potpourri, dried flowers, that kind of thing. I don't think I've taken much from that. And in fact, actually, it's kind of taught me not to do those things. I try and go down to the flower market probably two or three times a week. So that's like an early start, that's like six, I'll leave at 6am. And it's just really good to go because you know what's, you get to see what's in season, what's available, what colours are out, it's inspiring. If I've got, say, a client that want dining tables and bar arrangements for an event, I'll sometimes come into the studio and try and like figure out how that might look, how many, you know, vases I might need, what size they'll be, what mechanics I'll use for it. So there's a lot of like figuring out studio based work. And then I do that most days, actually, I'm in here most days with my little Nova, walk her obviously, drink about 1000 cups of tea. Yeah, that's it really.