Read on to discover the best advice floral designer Lewis Miller ever got—and more words of wisdom from the man behind the famous Flower Flash.
Floral artist Lewis MillerDon Freeman
As Gay Talese famously wrote in Esquire’s July 1960 issue, New York is a city of things unnoticed. Unless, of course, you happen to be walking past one of floral and event designer Lewis Miller’s now-iconic Flower Flashes. Even amid the cacophonous beeps, dings and buzzes of Midtown Manhattan, they will stop you in your tracks: a riot of roses, hydrangea and sundry other blooms exuberantly coloring outside the lines of, say, a timeworn trash can. “I love duality,” Miller says of these moments of fleeting sculpture, which he erects in just 15 minutes before daybreak casts its gauzy pink glow over the cityscape. “Swizzling up the pretty and the gritty makes a lot of sense to me. New York City is a fast paced place full of hard edges, turning wheels and steel. I wanted to bring nature and beauty to this urban backdrop, and flowers have a softness and lightness like nothing else.”
A color coordinated Flower Flash in midtown Manhattan. Irini Arakas
A Flower Flash in a trash can on the corner of Spring and Mulberry in New York City.Irini Arakas
It’s no wonder they lift spirits. When Covid-19 descended on New York City, Miller—who made his first Flower Flash in 2016, and soon developed a cult following that led to an Instagram account more than 220,000 followers deep—installed the bloom sculptures outside hospitals to help bring an instant of joy to frontline workers. “I wanted to give back to my fellow New Yorkers,” Miller says. “That was the original intent and what inspired the Flower Flashes. It was a gesture of goodwill that prompted me to create the first Flower Flash.” Indeed, humans have used bouquets in moments of both celebration and solace for millenia: ancient Roman brides brandished floral garlands as they drifted up the aisle to symbolize fertility; funerary flowers have been unearthed that date back to 62,000 B.C. Is it any wonder that cut blooms—seemingly there to hold our hands through life’s major highs and lows—have a market worth of nearly 8 billion a year in the U.S. alone? Call it flower power, with no signs of wilting.
A garland of lively sunflowers brightens up a Manhattan bus stop.Irini Arakas
A burst of color brightens up a snow-covered corner of New York City. Irini Arakas
A Flower Flash in New York's Meatpacking district.Irini Arakas
Miller fell in love with flowers during his childhood in California’s farm country, where he grew up “without a lot of luxuries,” he says. “I needed for nothing, but there was a lot I wanted! Let’s be honest, I craved a bit of excess and beauty. But I was surrounded by flowers—and they filled the void in the best way.” After studying horticulture and landscape design in Seattle, the designer beelined to New York City and took root in a top flower shop before launching his own namesake firm, LMD New York, Lewis Miller Design, in 2002. Now, his work has flourished like a marigold, and his company is nothing less than an empire—clients include boldfaced brands ranging from Louis Vuitton and Harry Winston to Richard Meier and Ralph Lauren. And like his de facto flora art, nothing about him is boring—as he wrote in his first book, “Styling Nature: A Masterful Approach to Floral Arrangements” (Rizzoli, 2016): “The best way to make an arrangement is to think about sex or listen to one of your favorite songs.” Not exactly advice Constance Spry might openly give, though she no doubt would fawn over his creations which, like hers, exult a wildness particular to nature.
Miller created a Flower Flash outside of Casa Magazines in the West Village in honor of the Spring 2021 issue of Frederic.Irini Arakas
