Where Curator Amanda Hunt Buys Fresh Floral Arrangements

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Los Angeles has more stores than anyone could physically tackle, but somehow we always keep returning to the usual suspects. To break out of the rut, we've asked some local shopping and fashion gurus to provide their hidden retail gems—those unique stores around LA that we might not all know about. Cue the Beatles: We're about to get a little help from our friends.

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Amanda Hunt is a curator at Culver City non-profit LAXART. A graduate of the Curatorial Practice Program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, she has worked at galleries and institutions including Whitechapel Gallery in London, Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Here, she shares her go-to for fresh floral arrangements.

I've always dreamed of a time when I might be able to afford proper weekly flower arrangements?and when that time comes, I'll call on Maurice Harris, the owner of and innovator behind Bloom & Plume. His arrangements are as eccentric and elegant as the man himself. Maurice has been running the business out of a studio in Downtown Los Angeles for the past two years, creating made-to-measure arrangements. He is very conscious of the fact that flowers are a total luxury and there is a responsibility in that, and that informs his business. For Maurice, it's about the experience of the flower and the smell of the bouquet, which is something you can't replicate via images as it simply doesn't do the sensorial experience justice. That is something I appreciate deeply as a curator—you have to find life in the practice, and in the experience of the art.

The Bloom & Plume approach is very casual/luxury. It looks effortless, but is highly considered. Maurice does it all, from "house flowers" aka house calls, where he will walk through the home with a client and curate specifically to accommodate their lifestyle, to "bucket deliveries" for the client who enjoys arranging themselves (he will drop off a gorgeous, supple bucket of the market's best flowers tailored to their wants and needs, and all they need to do is take from the bucket, giving them the freedom to satisfy their own creative impulse).

· Bloom and Plume [Official Site]
· LAXART [Official Site]
· All Shopping Confidential Posts [Racked LA]

Bloom & Plume

435 Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90013