In 1952, Constance Spry was commanded to prepare the flowers for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In a flourish of historical serendipity for Erdem Moralioglu, England’s most influential society florist had her shop at 64 South Audley Street, six doors down from his store at number 70. It was inspiration on a plate—and right on cue for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Erdem is as loved for his own florals as he is for cultivating his narratives around the lives of surprising, overlooked women of the past. Constance Spry is one of those, in buckets. In the 1950s, she had British housewives going mad for her lessons in abstract home flower arranging (a very English combination of kitchen garden improvisation and Ikebana). She was also a society caterer. For the coronation, faced with feeding hundreds of dignitaries after the service, she invented Coronation Chicken (a cold dish involving mayonnaise, curry powder, almonds, and dried apricots). The recipe went on to become a British national dish, but the name of Constance Spry has been more or less forgotten.
Erdem was boggling at all these timely Jubilee resonances while showing his collection for resort. “Constance Spry was kind of amazing,” he said, “designing Elizabeth’s coronation from her shop Flower Decoration, just the other side of this block!” He was studying a pin-board stuck with images of Connie and her school for girls; black and white photos of her flower arrangements; and other photos of ’50s English couture. “All of these badly-printed black and white photos of her arrangements were taken in her studio, in the shop. She loved Dutch flower still lifes,” he continued, pointing out the shadowy prints and embroideries he derived from them. “Constance was very practical, she was a gardener, but also a fantasist. So there’s this push-and-pull between something very utilitarian and playing with this couture-y kind of ridiculousness. It’s almost like her imaginary wardrobe for the kind of patrons that she worked for.”
Constance herself was a substantial woman in a tweed suit who appears to have been an unlikely social butterfly. “She was frumpy, but she had this incredible imagination.” By the 1930s she was in wildly fashionable demand. Connie it was who designed Wallis Simpson’s wedding celebrations to Edward VIII at their house in France. She was also gay, having a long relationship with the younger artist Gluck, who cut an elegant figure about London in impeccable men’s tailoring and became famed for her stylized deco flower paintings of Constance’s works.
There’s a nubby, peplumed loose-woven tweed skirt suit that nods to the florist’s sensible daywear and a beige linen trench coat embroidered over with green foliage. Swirly gray New Look-alike skirts refer glancingly to the sensible clothes of the army of young working women who helped their boss mount her spectacular flower installations.
Erdem draws another, discreet parallel between the times Constance traveled in and what’s happening today: the sudden abundance of parties, weddings, events, and excuses for dressing up. “She almost lost her business during World War II. I think there’s something about that time that she had to work through, against that horror—and then the move from all that austerity towards a new glamour and optimism.” Feeling a surge of post-pandemic bounce-back in his store, he’s laid on plenty of vivid contemporary flourishes: long hammered and washed silk dresses in orange or lime green, fuchsia cummerbunds with extravagantly trailing ribbons, a shimmery champagne-colored slip.
Arguably, Erdem is serving exactly the same sort of Mayfair clientele today as Constance Spry did in the ’50s, except his are certainly more international. Funnily enough, he learned all about her by unearthing her connections with the bohemian painter and plantsman Cedric Morris at an exhibition at the Garden Museum. She bought flowers from Morris from his house at Benton End. But that’s a whole other collection story. To catch the sequel, you’ll have to skip over to read Erdem’s menswear review.
