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White parrot tulips seem to be reaching out from their vase.

Courtesy of Lisa Cooper

Lisa Cooper’s Botanical Ingenuity Elevates Florals to High Art

The florist thinks outside the box—and beyond the petal.

September 28, 2023

Lisa Cooper, an Australian floral designer with a Ph.D. in fine art, draws on minimal, elemental ingredients to create shapely, captivating arrangements that have seduced the worlds of fashion and design.

What makes the luminaries behind labels like Hermès, Prada, and Dries van Noten flock to Australian floral designer Lisa Cooper’s singular creations? Perhaps it’s her ability to create a mesmerizing sense of movement and moodiness with just one or two types of blooms—or, sometimes, fruit or vegetables. “I’m driven by contrasting palettes and textures or the harmony of corresponding shapes and tones,” says Cooper. If her point of view sounds distinctly cerebral, that’s because it is: Cooper has a Ph. D. in fine art—hence her business’s name, Doctor Cooper Studio—and treats her medium with the reverence of a sculptor.

Purple garlic and champagne grapes make for an intriguing pair.

Courtesy of Lisa Cooper

Her jumping-off point is the splendor of an individual specimen, from which she builds an arrangement that seeks to capture that essence as a collective. “I like to compose masses of blooms to exemplify their innate and sublime beauty,” Cooper explains. “Flowers offer limitless potential for new work.”

A dusky color palette of purples and greens unifies an arrangement of graffiti eggplants and cathedral bells.

Courtesy of Lisa Cooper
  • Open regalia lilies mingle with closed buds.

    Courtesy of Lisa Cooper
  • A grouping of spider chrysanthemums resembles anemones swaying in the ocean current.

    Courtesy of Lisa Cooper

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 9 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!