 |
Theme: fashions & trends
Flowers have always been subject to the vagaries of fashion, with figures such as the Empress Josephine, who invented that sine qua non of the aristocrat lifestyle - the rose garden.
Josephine was obsessed with roses, and imported them from all round the world for her rose garden in Malmaison. Such was the importance of her collection that on one occasion during the Napoleonic Wars, a ship carrying a new variety for Malmaison was granted safe passage between the warring British and French navies.
It could be said that the tulip became the ultimate fashion accessory in 17th Century Holland. It became such a desirable commodity that bulbs were bought and sold for ludicrous sums, and fortunes made and lost. Dumas' novel The Black Tulip celebrates tulipmania. The hero manages to breed this most rare and sought-after of flowers, thereby winning release from prison and a fortune in gold pieces.
In the 19th Century, it was the sunflower's turn to be fashionable, with the aesthetic movement using it for its highly decorative nature. Oscar Wilde admired it for its "gaudy leonine beauty" and was famously caricatured as a sunflower in Punch. The lily was also favoured by the aesthetes, but for its "precious loveliness", according to Wilde. |
|
|
|
|
Any form of reproduction, transmission, performance, display, rental, lending or storage in any retrieval system of the images displayed on this website without the written consent of the copyright holders is prohibited. |
|
|
