Fauxliage: Phoney flowers are faking fabulous
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Fake flowers have held a funereal place in our lives — delegated to wreaths and waiting-rooms.
Raw fraying fabric edges — giving the game away in unlikely over bright colours of bulletproof nylon, completed with plug-on plastic leaves and blunt thorns — this was not a pretty picture.
The downstairs toilet was a favourite haunt for the unlikely blossom-bush atrophying on a windowsill or fly spattered dahlia frozen in resin mulch, keeping the bin company.
Today’s phoney flowers and plants are in a whole new league for authenticity — and you’re more likely to want to show these out-of-season surprises off, than use them as corner fillers.
The texture, shading and the attention given to botanical detail delivers a manmade trailing wisteria almost impossible to spot without a dart of the fingers or surreptitious sniff.
Hand assembled latex and silk blossoms and greenery (both natural materials) are the new champions in petals and leaves, and both offer a translucency and surfacing — impossible with the coarse open weave of nylon.
Invest in the best and you can expect pliable stems, fragile veining and a stunning degree of detail to stamens, pistils, buds, and leaves. Nature does not perform to order, and in any bouquet or living plant, greenery and flowers will emerge at their own speed. Good copies will indicate some imperfection, but to totally convince — look for products in single assemblage pieces or full bouquets, that feature flowers represented in every stage from tight, emerging buds to open, shaggy blossoms ready to drop.
Variation in height and species, and sheer leaf fillers such as swiss cheese plant, rubber plants; eucalyptusl; willow; birch; berries and other florist favourites are equally as important here. Keep in mind that although many quality products can be trimmed up — snip, snap, that’s it, one length.
If you reveal a wire core, dab the stem with some DBA glue to seal it shut again. Remember, if you show off a flower known for its scent, visitors will be drawn to smell it. Use sprays, essential oils or pick something else.
Match the quality of pieces in every arrangement — cheap tarty flowers can bring the whole bouquet into question. Suppliers range from your local florist to Tiger, to Ikea and home superstores, like Meadow & Byrne to individual makers (expect a premium with any designer branding such as OKA or Abigail Aherne).
Get your hands on the flowers and let your eyes and a brush of the fingers make the judgment. Mixing up fresh and immortal artificial is a classic decorator hack. Many fakes can be popped into water if the stems allow (read the instructions with your product).
Finished bouquets make superb gifts and can be kept in their bespoke arrangement ( often more expensive than the fresh) or be teased apart and used for their constituent parts (sprays are sometimes a cheaper way into a fake collection).
If you love succulents but cannot even keep these fat little soldiers alive – go phony and stab them into everything from vertical planting to cardboard egg boxes on the kitchen windowsill. They’re ideal for rooms with low light, where natural blooms or house plants would fail to thrive.
Orchids, ferns and bamboo, bought with a real clay or ceramic pot offer structural splendor and are great for upper shelves, bathroom shelves or left out on a coffee table.
Current favourite arrangements include one star species in multiples (for example a hydrangea and waxy white magnolia). Go large with a blousy generous dozen —beautiful in a great glass vase.
A splendid mix up of artificial blossoms plunged into natural foliage are brilliant for winter table dressing, using faux agapanthus, peonies or roses when there’s nothing on hand from the garden, but ever-greenery.
Wild flowers should appear a little undressed and less symmetrical in the finish. Matt finishing to the stems is a convincing element here — found in better quality silk pieces. Dramatic shaggy darks in tulips, ranunculus and dahlias are fascinating new arrivals for autumn 2018 – pluck them where you find them.
Mix up with even bare elegant branches and use malleable stems to bow one or two heads down in a show of gentle wilting expected from fully blossoming flowers. Flowering branches are great buys that can be rustled into wider bouquets or staged alone. Like all fabrics, silk, latex and hand-made papers will fade in bright UV light, so keep them away from direct sunshine from south facing windows.
Turn a long term arrangement to allow it to gently age all around. Be careful with cotton and paper flowers (highly hand-crafted phonies) as the water even speckled on your real flowers and foliage may spoil them.
To clean most flowers, a hair dryer kept at a respectful distance and gently buffeted on the leaves and petals, will blow away tell-tale dust.
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