Just days after actress and artist Tricia Paoluccio met with Oscar de la Renta to discuss the beginning stages of a collaboration, the coronavirus pandemic reached the United States—and began spreading like wildfire. Weeks later, Broadway closed its doors for the first time since 2011, banishing any chance of scoring another acting role for the time being. “I felt really depressed,” the pressed-flower expert tells me over the phone, detailing a period of time that felt painfully bleak as an actor and an up-and-coming artist. Nonetheless, Paoluccio held out hope that the Oscar de la Renta collab could still come to fruition. In early March, she booked a flight to her parent’s farm in Modesto, California, to pick and press wildflowers for the fashion label. Upon arrival, though, it was hailing, and to make matters worse, the absence of wildflowers painted a jarringly accurate picture of the times.
But when the storm passed and the days got warmer, tiny wildflowers including—but not limited to—buttercups, bluebells, larkspur, and mariposa lilies began springing up in the orchard. Having uprooted her life and her two sons from New York City to self-isolate in the California foothills (“It’s literally like living in Little House on the Prairie,” Paoluccio says), the Modern Pressed Flower founder had an epiphany of sorts. “I decided I’m going to pick these flowers as if Oscar de la Renta will happen, and that’s what I did,” she recounts. “I spent five months there, and every day, I picked one handful of flowers—and I pressed that handful. It takes about a month for flowers to be fully cured, ready to go, and dry enough to be glued to paper, so I had dozens of flower presses going on at the same time.” Dozens turned into thousands, and all the while, Paoluccio kept the faith, hoping the ODLR team would call.
“A glimpse of a thought came to me. I said, ‘no, nothing good can be lost. Your source of good isn’t tied up in circumstance. Just have faith.'”
That long-awaited phone call came in August of 2020, courtesy of creative director Laura Kim. By request, Paoluccio sent her a video of all of the flowers she picked, pressed, and laid out in her art studio there. Kim iconically responded with heart eye emojis, and not long after, the Broadway actor/artist flew back to New York City to present layers of loose flowers, along with a dozen glued compositions. The Oscar de la Renta team committed in December, and in just a matter of months, the beloved fashion house’s floral Fall-Winter 2021 collection was born. Paoluccio’s pressed flowers take the form of darling minidresses, trousers, and party-ready maxis.
But a look at the label’s 25-piece line doesn’t do it justice. What separates the artist’s craft from others is that her botanical designs feature real pressed flower imagery rather than a botanical design brought to life through watercolors, paint, or illustration. “After decades of pressing flowers, I’ve developed a method of flower-pressing that enables me to keep a flower’s vibrancy and color, preventing the flower from turning brown,” she explains. Once pressed, she meticulously lays out her compositions and glues each botanical to a piece of watercolor paper before bringing them to a fine-art printing company that’s able to photograph them to be so high-res that they look real. Then, images are printed on fabric and hand-embroidered to enhance the flower’s natural shape. As Paoluccio puts it, the finished result is a botanical design that exudes “absolute organic truthfulness.”
Just two weeks following the Oscar de la Renta FW21 collection’s official debut, Taylor Swift took the stage at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards wearing the look book’s opening number: a custom embroidered long-sleeved mini dress from the line. Despite having a hand in the design’s creation, Paoluccio found out what Swift was wearing in real-time. But we’re willing to guess that the flower-presser preferred it that way; just another beautiful dream-turned-reality. “I found out in the middle of the Grammy’s. I had no idea,” she admits. “It felt so right. I mean, she’s the perfect person to wear that dress.”
Swift’s ODLR Grammys moment perfectly coincided with the last day of showings of Paoluccio’s botanical designs at the Highline Nine in Chelsea, NYC. One of the pieces she showed to the public was a custom Steinway & Sons grand piano featuring wildflowers picked during the time spent at her parent’s cabin. “It’s so funny; I can’t tell you how many people have seen that piano and said that’s Taylor Swift piano,” the entrepreneur says over the phone, joyfully adding, “Let’s get it to Taylor Swift!” Perhaps the greatest takeaway from Paoluccio’s story is that opportunities come when you least expect them, like a field of wildflowers that springs up after a destructive storm. Or a phone call from the “Love Story” singer, requesting the piano that’s seemingly made for her. Hi Taylor, are you listening?
