Editor’s Note: The following is an extended version of the story that appears in our latest print edition.

“The Orchid Show: Florals in Fashion” brings the catwalk to the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at Bedford Park’s New York Botanical Garden in a fashion-inspired celebration of all things orchid. Attendees are treated to bold, new, orchid-inspired designs, displayed on standing mannequins, created by New York’s rising stars of the stitch. These include the dramatic, picture-perfect floral displays of Collina Strada by Hillary Taymour, Dauphinette by Olivia Cheng, and FLWR PSTL by Kristen Alpaugh.

 

Representatives of NYBG said of the exhibit, “This is your chance to ‘walk the runway’ and show off your own personal flair, your love for orchids, and your fashion-forward connections to the natural world, because florals are always en vogue at NYBG.”

 

When approached to display at the show, Taymour said, “I was really excited and I wanted to approach fashion in this way that was outer-worldly, so we created these beautiful mannequins, which are very much, ‘Are they/aren’t they aliens, frogs, horses, who knows?’ But I love the way they turned out.” Taymour said she learned a lot about orchids during the process. “They’re quite delicate; [they were] harder to work with than I thought they were going to be but ultimately, the beauty is incomparable, so I think we’ll be using a lot of orchids in the future.”

According to its representatives, Collina Strada isn’t just a fashion label, it’s also a platform Taymour created for social issues and awareness. Her main concern is staying true to her craft, and staying on course to becoming “a fully sustainable and radically transparent brand.” Based and manufactured in New York, according its representatives, the brand’s cult-status, core pieces transcend trends.

 

They said the designs are imbued with a fearlessly fluid attitude, re-inventing classics and unexpected details, and the Collina Strada brand embodies humor and youth.

 

Meanwhile, they said the brand DNA is now firmly cemented in the ability to look inward, even when being loud and expressive on the outside. Season after season, its representatives said Collina Strada’s goal remains the same: to encourage self-reflection through clothing and to ask, “How can you be the best version of yourself today?”

Showing each season on the official New York Fashion Week schedule, according to its representatives, Collina Strada has reimagined their shows to spur others into action, tackling global problems from racism to politics. “We are in a crucial state of change right now and the more we do, the more we can impact others to take action,” Taymour said.

 

For her part, Cheng said that when creating her collection for the show, she thought a lot about the concept of orchid punks. “There’s this rebelliousness to the orchid and having the breathtaking, ethereal, “glowiness” and dewiness of the orchid, sat next to the spiky, dry, “powderiness”of a Tangela [plant] is something that I really became fascinated with, and really like the duality of them that’s represented throughout my work.”

 

Cheng added, “I’m most excited to be working with the Botanical Garden because typically in my art practice as a fashion designer, I’m used to bringing unconventional materials onto a runway, but in this scenario, I was able to work with real, living plants and watch those pieces not only come to life, but remain living, and remain sustained and watch them even grow throughout the duration of the exhibition.”

Botanical artist and founder of Haus of Stems, Alpaugh, also known as FLWR PSTL, describes herself as, “If Edward Scissorhands and Willy Wonka had a flower baby….with a splash of Bob Ros.”

 

“The natural world, being a botanical artist, is woven into everything that I do,” she said. “For this particular exhibit, I really studied orchids and the way that their petals move, and the curves and the patterns.” She went on to say that her vision for the exhibit was to capture the history of her time being born and raised on the East coast of New Jersey and to translate that into flowers.

 

As reported, in 2022, the former State senator for senate district 34, Alessandra Biaggi, teamed up with The Act on Fashion Coalition, a group of fashion and sustainability-focused organizations, to promote the passage of a proposed new law, the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act. The bill aimed to hold fashion brands accountable for the environmental and social impacts of their manufacturing, and was sponsored by Biaggi in the Senate.

As a senator, Biaggi represented parts of the The Bronx and Westchester Counties until she ran for Congress in 2022, ultimately losing the Democratic Primary to then-Congressman Sean Maloney (NY-18) in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Maloney would later lose reelection in that district to Republican Mike Lawler. Meanwhile, the fashion bill appears to be languishing at the committee stages of the State legislative process, where it now has no sponsor in the senate, and in the Assembly, is sponsored by Assemblywoman Dr. Anna Kelles (A.D. 125).

 

As for the Orchid Show, there is still a chance to catch the various fashion pieces which are on display through April 22. Indeed, the designers brought this year’s show to life with such dramatic effect, it was a slow motion walk through the exhibit on April 6 due to the sheer number of attendees, with many more waiting in line.

 

Meanwhile, as reported, coinciding with Earth Day, a two-day symposium on the future of food, hosted by The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) and partners, will be held in New York City next week. The first day, Tuesday, April 23, will take place at the New York Botanical Garden, and the second, Wednesday, April 24, at the Rockefeller Foundation Global Headquarters, located at 20 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. For more information, click here.

Of this year’s Orchid Show, Alpaugh concluded, “I think in our lifetime we have so many different versions of ourselves, and so Regina, which is the center piece of the exhibit, is all of the mannequins and none of the mannequins all at the same time. What I’d like visitors to capture is we all have phases in our lives, and we change, and we morph, and it’s all part of the journey.”