The word floriography has a poetic, succinctly beautiful definition: “the language of flowers.”
Take, for example, the superstition of the Bleeding Heart: If you crush one of its blooms and the juice is red, your love is reciprocated. If the juice is white…well, it may be time to move on. There’s the mythology of ferns: Druids believed that if you found the seeds of this plant, you’d be granted the power of invisibility. (Even Shakespeare wrote about this.) And there’s the social signaling of jasmine: In Tunisia, men tuck a fragrant bouquet of them behind one ear or the other to indicate their relationship status.
With the 2024 Met Gala’s Garden of Time dress code, there were hundreds of flowers—and attendant interpretations—to consider, so we reached out to the floriography expert Karen Azoulay for help. She’s the author of Flowers and Their Meanings and the creator behind the popular Instagram account @flowersmeanings. Azoulay wields a deep knowledge of botanical symbolism, and here we analyze the possible meanings and subtexts embedded in last night’s garden, as it were. (Whether the designers themselves were aware of their meanings is a separate question.)
Out on the red carpet, I noticed Jack Harlow’s lily-of-the-valley brooch from Dior. (As it happened, I had bought exactly the same pin to wear for the evening.) Azoulay told me that many believe the lily of the valley symbolizes a “return of happiness,” which feels like a good place to begin this examination.
Elsewhere on the carpet, she spotted one of the evening’s cohosts, Bad Bunny, clutching a bouquet of blended-fabric flowers. “It looks to me like Bad Bunny is wearing a reference to the Puerto Rican flower the flor de maga, a hibiscus look-alike, along with a rose, a US flower,” Azoulay noted. In that bunch, Bad Bunny also had an iteration of the flax plant—the flora that Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on in older tellings of the fairy tale. (“In the Disney version,” Azoulay explains, “Sleeping Beauty pricks herself on a spindle.”)
Azoulay also flagged Colman Domingo, who wore a cream-colored double-breasted suit jacket with a large fabric brooch of a black calla lily. “The elegant calla lily was championed by the aesthetic art movement of the late 19th century,” she says. “As adherents to the adage ‘art for art’s sake,’ creatives were more interested in surrounding themselves with beauty than searching for deeper meaning. With this philosophy in mind, Oscar Wilde was known to decorate his dining table with calla lilies and sunflowers.” (And speaking of mega-brooches on the boys: I loved Jeremy Strong’s lapel of cloth wildflowers by Loro Piana.)
A fun fact about Demi Moore’s Harris Reed showstopper: Her ensemble’s printed peonies could have suggested a certain coyness. “The association between peonies and bashfulness originated from folklore that told of mischievous nymphs hiding within the peony’s numerous petals,” offers Azoulay.
And here’s another observation, regarding Mike Faist’s Loewe turnip brooch: “A humble and edible root, the turnip carries associations beyond the vegetable patch. Turnip was once a 19th-century slang term for a timepiece.” The Challengers star may have made the most obscure allusion to the gala’s Garden of Time theme.
Quannah Chansinghorse affixed forget-me-nots to her hair, matching the hue of her H&M dress. “The emotional sentiment attached to forget-me-nots is self-explanatory,” says Azoulay. “It’s also the state flower of Alaska, where Quannah was raised.” There was a sentimentality to Karlie Kloss’s Swarovski flora, too, which evoked cherry blossoms. “Cherry blossoms bloom in beautiful pink clouds, but after a week or so, the petals fall to the ground like soft confetti. They speak to a principle of sensitivity around ephemera.” (Fitting given the exhibition’s fixation on nature—and, in a sense, decay.)
Nelly Korda—the number one women’s golfer in the world—wore an Oscar de la Renta dress featuring red poppies embroidered on a sheer base. Azoulay notes that “poppies are one of the most culturally significant flowers around the world, especially for remembrance. Where most flowers can’t grow, wild red poppies appear—even in places of war, where the soil and land is disturbed. This blooming sign of life in times of devastation is why the poppy, which is a symbol for consolation, continues to be used as a touching floral tribute.”
Yet roses were, perhaps inevitably, the night’s most prominent floral focal point.
Cynthia Erivo’s Thom Browne look featured allover embroidered pink rose petals. “Both Nefertiti and Cleopatra were known to scent themselves with roses,” says Azoulay. “It’s even said that Cleopatra spent the equivalent of $800 a day on rose-scented perfumes to rub on her hands and arms.”
Sarah Jessica Parker’s Richard Quinn dress included delicately embroidered white roses. “A white rose is a symbol for silence,” says Azoulay. “The association goes back to Greek mythology. Since the Middle Ages, a rose above a table signified that anything said at the table was to be held in strict confidence and not repeated.” (After all, as SJP—a longtime gala-goer—would know better than almost anyone, what happens inside The Met is meant to stay inside The Met!)
And finally there was the classic red rose. Its meanings are myriad, but ultimately the flower is an expression of love. (Okay, this one isn’t so secret.)
“Shakira and I were excited about the idea of a red rose,” Wes Gordon (of Carolina Herrera) told me on the carpet. “The column of her dress is the stem, and the arcade is the blossom. Red is Shakira’s favorite color, and it’s also a Herrera signature.”
And here’s a fun fact, whether she knows it or not: “Colombia, Shakira’s home country, is one of the biggest exporters of roses to the United States,” Azoulay says. The more you know.
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