Innovative flower designs at Flor de Luiz

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As the persistent and inspiring street protests by Brazilian citizens demanding cleaner government and improved social services enter their fourth week, things back at Flor de Luiz continue apace.

Luiz has introduced a new line of flower arrangements utilizing pieces of drift wood collected from the beach near our apartment.  These natural beachscape pieces combine flowers, mosses, insects and nesting bird details to produce stunning results.

Introducing these innovative designs is meant to both feed and inform the curious public that comes to his booth at the weekend art fair. Luiz has earned a reputation for unique and unusual designs. So many  local florists follow a tired old (perhaps tried and true, in their opinion) formula for arrangements that amounts to little more than “chop and drop” simple pieces that everyone has seen a hundred times before.

Luiz is never content to stay on the beaten trail. He feels best when he is on the path less traveled. It has been an uphill struggle, slowly teaching those who visit his booth that innovation is not only possible but beautiful when it comes to flower designs. He invites people to join him in thinking out of the box and to value design over sheer volume of blooms.

We have witnessed the steady morphing of his clients from elderly women looking for that simple bunch of roses in a pot for their bathroom vanity into a younger set of urban professionals excited by innovation, seeking to lead the pack with feature designs that light up a room rather than just fill up a space.

It has not been easy to convince the inexperienced consumer to eat their vegetables (even when they taste so sweet). Luiz definitely has a selection of the tried and true designs available as gifts for grandma. But slowly his booth is blossoming into a weekly destination visited by curious neighbors out for a stroll in the park on the weekend.