« For the Lanesborough in London, the most English of roses – what you might almost call a “vintage rose”, cultivated by the late, great English “rosarian”, David Austin.
For Palácio Tangará, surrounded by lush gardens in near- tropical São Paulo, an orchid – what else?
For L’Apogée Courchevel in the rocky Alps, Amaryllis, and for the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, sweet pea – that most Mediterranean of blooms. »
These were the choices made by Parisian florist Bastien Brousse when he set himself the task of curating flowers that would be emblematic of these masterpiece hotels – natural beauties that could be teamed with the most exquisite pieces by master jewellers.
“Flowers have a fleeting beauty and lend their colours and perfumes to each season,”
Brousse declares, when asked what made him dream of working with blooms growing up in the Auvergne, among the wild gentian and poet’s daffodils native to the Massif Central. As the shoot shows, these days Brousse gets to work with far more exotic owers, both at his studio in the 16th arrondissement and at Le Bristol Paris, where, for the past year, he has curated the flowers that grace Epicure, 114 Faubourg and Café Antonia. That said, he feels the best bouquets consist of “no more than three varieties of seasonal owers, set off with foliage”.
“Tuesdays and Fridays are ‘Flower Days’ at Le Bristol,” he explains, which in his case means getting up at 4am to choose them at Paris’s famous Rungis flower market. A oral style tip? At Le Bristol, the classical Medici vases have given way to something more modern in midnight blue. And a motto? A line from the surrealist poet, Paul Eluard:
“Happiness is a single bouquet: unruly, light, tender, sweet.”