By Cecily Grace Morgan

My name is Cecily and I’m a floral print-aholic.

This year I turn the big 2-0 and it’s time I admit what many guessed a long time ago. I have a serious addiction to floral print which intensifies with every ASOS sale.

I’m not saying that my wardrobe is a faithfully flowery affair. I occasionally flirt with gingham and animal print is my bit on the side, but floral print is without doubt my one true love, and far from an ephemeral obsession.

I can’t quite pinpoint where this infatuation started or why I am drawn to flowery fashion. I suspect that it could be a physical manifestation of my die-hard veganism, or maybe I listened to Lana Del Rey too much during my adolescence. Kurt Vonnegut once said: “Flowers didn’t ask to be flowers and I didn’t ask to be me.” In my case I didn’t ask to be me but the spendthrift on my shoulder always asks for more flowers.

A few months ago, in a Spanish revision lesson my teacher explained a game to us, we would each write a description of a member of the class, and the rest of the students would use it to guess who was being described. When it came to the descriptions of me, I expected a wave of pelo rizado, “curly hair”, but the descriptions of me were instead composed of flors and zapatos floreados, “flowers” and “flowery shoes”.

Thus, it seems, as unmistakable as Ariana Grande’s skipping-rope ponytail or Cara Delevingne’s brilliant brows, floral prints have become my signature. People have come to know me by the bouquet-printed blouses and petal-printed dresses in which I so regularly bedeck myself.

And it’s no longer just my clothes which bear a floral print, flowers have begun to permeate every aspect of my life. If it comes emblazed with florals, I’m sold. My bedding is emblazoned with flowers, my cutlery is floral print, my phone screensaver is a meadow of flowers…I think you get the gist. Flowers are not just an addiction but an aesthetic and there is no aesthetic that I would rather have.

From the floriography, or “language of flowers”, so loved by the Victorians, to the flower children born from the 1960s pacifist Flower Power movement, flowers have long been used to symbolise love, romance, peace, and freedom.

The word “flower” is featured over 100 times in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. By wearing floral print, I hope to harness this power of poetry and love; no matter how bad my day is, wearing bright prints never fails to bring me joy. In the Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzō stated: “In joy or sadness flowers are our constant friends”, and I can’t disagree.

It’s clear I’m not the only floral fan. From Kate Middleton to Taylor Swift, it’s almost impossible to name a star who hasn’t rocked the look, or a designer who hasn’t sent flower-adorned models sashaying down the runway. In September 2017 Gigi Hadid hit the glossy fashion headlines by walking the Moschino Spring 2018 runway show in Milan dressed as a bouquet of flowers. I thought such outfits only existed in my dreams.

Thus, florals are still able to seduce trendsetters of today, as they always have, and I hope that they never fail to captivate me, even if my addiction to floral fashion proves lethal to my bank account. I secretly relish the “Floral Queen” title that my friends bestowed upon me, and cannot deny the fuzzy feeling that warms my heart when someone sends me a photo of a flower-patterned blouse or dress that they’ve spotted in H&M or Topshop with a magic, “I saw this and thought of you” message.

Claude Monet, famous for his paintings of nature once affirmed: “I must have flowers, always, and always.” I’m going to make this my life motto.

Cecily Grace Morgan

Images sourced from Vogue Archives and Instagram.