Brussels (AFP)

Fashion shows have gone virtual and big weddings have disappeared with the pandemic but the florist Thierry Boutemy, who worked for Sofia Coppola, Lady Gaga or Hermès, remains passionate about his art, closer to nature and the seasons .

For more than 25 years, this Frenchman has been running a shop in Brussels, a scented lair with cob walls, where poppies from Italy, hellebores (Christmas roses) from Holland, tulips from the south of France rub shoulders with grasses from Israel " which seem to come out of the fields ".

Imported flowers - "Belgium does not produce anything in winter" - but all grown in the ground, without chemicals and of which he knows how they were produced.

At the world's largest flower market in Aalsmeer (Netherlands), the florist prefers small producers discovered in the vicinity of this flower fair.

"This market is a disaster. It is a war machine which produces on a large scale as one produces chickens in battery. We are in the middle of commercialism", he criticizes, denouncing in passing the fashion of past flowers in color baths.

"Instead of buying roses at the end of a supermarket checkout, it is better to afford a single flower for 3 euros", he advises, regretting the lack of consideration for horticulturalists, facing the industrialization of the sector.

Despite everything, he still has to go to Aalsmeer from time to time for an artistic project, like the bouquets of peonies made in the middle of winter for Sofia Coppola's "Marie-Antoinette", an exuberant floral decoration that remains his "most beautiful professional memory" .

- Simplicity -

He composed it after studying the paintings of the artist of the Rococo movement Anne Vallayer-Coster, who represented the sovereign passionate about flowers, including the white potato flower.

A simplicity that goes well to someone who learned horticulture at the age of 17, loves "fragile flowers", cultivates his garden, and sees flowers as "a refuge, an escape" to "forget the world in which we have been living for a few years ".

A remedy also sometimes, like this decoration kept in his shop, a bush of medicinal plants (eucalyptus, heather) for a sick bride and inspired by the dryers of herbalists.

A marriage finally canceled due to Covid.

Used to working for events, the bulk of his activity, confinement "took him back 25 years, as if everything was starting over again, to do things more simply, it was not so negative".

During this period, "a lot of people wanted flowers, the flower brings life to the house. In the end, it brought me a lot of happiness," says the man who spent his childhood in the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel .

He has collaborated with big names like Lanvin, Hermès or Dries Van Noten, but this stylish bearded 52-year-old in an orange jacket and blue overalls, rejects the label of "fashion florist".

“I'm not at all interested in fashion, actually,” he laughs.

What he is looking for: "people who can take me in their delirium, sometimes it is not my taste but it amuses me to understand what is in their head".

He worked several times with the great fashion photographer Mario Testino, notably for a cover of Vogue with Lady Gaga in 2012. "He had seen my work for a party in Milan. He told me + you do what you want +, there are not many people like him in this environment ".

"I improvised an arch of flowers and plants, without thinking and with a lot of freedom".

Today, while awaiting the resumption of all his activities, he is working on a film project with an Italian filmmaker.

The story of an original who would like to build a plant palace.

Hers maybe.

© 2021 AFP