At CRAFT, one of the things that’s most important to us is spreading the word about community members and local businesses that we love. Today, then, we’re so excited to share with you Flora Couture, the company that created our beautiful living walls and that provides all of the oh-so zen succulents and fresh greenery that help bring our space to life every single day. Basically, anything living and breathing at CRAFT that isn’t one of our hungry customers or bustling staff members, is a product of the Flora Couture team and their killer vision.
We began working with Flora Couture in 2015 as we worked to renovate the space that is now CRAFTkitchen. We knew the walls were missing something that fresh paint and new backsplash just couldn’t provide. Our entire approach was all about being local, organic and fresh, and, it was so clear we needed some greenery to breathe new life into our setting and communicate this approach.
So, we started working with award-winning floral designer and founder of Flora Couture, Michelle Joy Howard, to help bring our vision to life. We started by adding living walls with a heavy focus on succulents and other organic materials.
The walls turned out beautifully—they were just what our space needed and played perfectly into the clean, modern aesthetic we were going for. From there, we knew our patio needed something to separate it from the parking lot. We wanted our guests to feel as if they were dining in a space entirely of its own, rather than one that was part of a stripmall. Michelle talked us through a number of ideas, and we eventually landed on the herb palettes that you see on our patio today. They do just the job we were looking for—they carry the CRAFT aesthetic from interior to exterior perfectly, and they also separate the pretty patio space from the (not-so-pretty) lot beautifully.
Michelle’s experience and knowledge made working with Flora Couture such a breeze—she just got us (and understood—to a tee—what it was we wanted the space to say). Michelle and her team have been working to execute creative visions like ours since 1997, when Flora Couture was first founded. Flora Couture opened under the name Flora 2000 with a vision of bringing the high-end aesthetic and floral fashions that were commonplace in LA, Chicago and New York to the Las Vegas Valley (where nothing of that caliber existed at the time). Michelle describes Vegas as “a very small big town” and particularly loves interacting with community members as she works to turn their big ideas into something tangible.
Flora Couture’s services include everything from daily floral deliveries to providing plants for residential and commercial interior design to creating holidayscapes (among many other things). Michelle and her team also offer floral and décor for weddings and lifetime celebrations. But, perhaps our favorite efforts of the company’s are philanthropy based. Flora Couture works with a number of local charities and recently partnered with Create a Change Now, an organization that builds and plants gardens at at-risk schools and provides students with nutritional information.
You can visit Flora Couture’s (pretty fabulous) boutique at 9516 West Flamingo Road, #130 and its design studio at 2404 Western Avenue. You can also visit the Flora Couture website, Facebook page or Instagram for a complete look at all of their gorgeous work.
