Kellie

Co-founder, Fig & Bloom

Kellie is the co-founder of Fig & Bloom and designs the range, bringing a background in fashion to how the studio works with colour and form.

On leaving the copy machine of early-2000s fashion, four quiet years, and what we're building now that I'm back.

When I left the fashion industry to go into the flower industry, my friends jokingly congratulated me on going into an industry where at least I'd get to be creative.

It's a thinly veiled secret that the fashion industry is fraught with copycats. When I was working in fashion, it was the peak of mass-market fashion: the peak of the Country Road group, Witchery, Decjuba, Portmans, Glassons, Dotti, Supre. And a lot of these businesses just copied the trends from Zara.

The buyers would do the buying trips overseas and look at what styles were being repeated, in different colourways, or from season to season without any changes. And we were literally tasked with the job of repeating this style almost exactly for the brand that we worked with. That was what being in the fashion industry was all about in the early 2000s.

So when I started in the flower industry, it was quite a refreshing change. I started bringing my fashion aesthetic, which was colour blocking and texture blocking. I brought that across from fashion into the flower industry, and really created something the industry hadn't seen before.

Arrangement in blocks of pink and yellow chrysanthemums with banksia and magnolia foliage — Blocks of colour, blocks of texture

Hands trimming stems at a workshop bench covered in pink flowers — At the bench in the studio

It's a thinly veiled secret that the fashion industry is fraught with copycats.

Fig & Bloom has now been copied in so many different ways. People have literally copied our designs, the way we name designs, the colour blocking and texture blocking element. Our website has been completely copied from one business to the other. But despite all of this, we've always just stayed humble and kept our heads down and focused.

They say copying is the finest form of flattery.

There's a part of this story I haven't told. For the past four years or so, I haven't been very present in the business. Two small boys arrived in that time, and between the pregnancies, a health battle. It has been intense, and there's more to say about that another time. For now, I'm on the mend and back at work in the studio.

Coming back has felt less like a return and more like a beginning. I'm excited to bring energy and creativity back into the business, and to forge new directions. There's so much planned that we're looking forward to dropping.

The highlight of my past twelve months, watching from a step back, has been the Flower Club community. For now it lives in a Facebook group, and that's exactly the itch: a community this good deserves more than a feed. It deserves a room, a bench, and flowers in its hands.

So here's the first thing we're dropping. Starting this July, we're launching monthly workshops in each of our studios: Fairfield, Camperdown and Bowen Hills. You'll build your favourite bouquet with your own hands, at our bench, with our flowers and our team around you. If you've made a purchase with us in the last 30 days, your spot is free. It's also a chance to collect your Flower Club order in person, and to finally put faces to names.