When it comes to creating the overall look of an event, Avissa Mojtahedi and Erin Perri believe flowers are the pièce de résistance. “It’s like wearing a great outfit. If you’re rocking it with a great pair of jeans and a great top, but you don’t have a necklace or earrings on, there’s something missing,” says Mojtahedi, who joined forces with Perri in spring 2008 to launch Petals, a new floral design company that focuses on arrangements with architectural flair. Mojtahedi studied architecture at university and has spent the past 10 years working with an interior design firm in the city. Perri also has a background in interior design.
The duo’s education and experience play an integral role in their floral creations, Mojtahedi says. “Whether it’s the colour of the arrangements, the scale, the texture—there’s more of a sculptural aspect to what we do. It’s taking the entire scene into account more than saying, ‘Here’s a bouquet, place it wherever you want.’” The two met while Perri was working at a trade showroom on Designers Walk and immediately hit it off. “I worked with a designer, and we’d be sourcing fabrics and furniture [at the showroom], and we just connected,” Mojtahedi says.
The pair began talking about starting a business together and initially toyed with the idea of staging events, but ultimately decided to do something unrelated to their day jobs. “Because we wanted the business to have a design aspect and we’d always loved events, it formulated into doing floral design,” Perri says.
Jen Foster, whose company Style for Style represents fashion designers such as Evan Biddell and Philip Sparks, called on Petals to create floral arrangements for several fashion events at the Burroughes Building—a 6,000-square-foot loft space on Queen Street West. For Biddell’s after-party, held at the venue following his runway show at Fashion Week in October, Foster filled the venue with Polynesian-style furniture from Futé Design and turned to Petals for the flowers. “They did these big, dramatic pieces with huge leaves. People loved it and it became a conversation piece,” she says. “Their work is very fashion-forward.”
That project led to others within the fashion industry, the most recent being Petals’ involvement with the Buy Design benefit held in April at the Fermenting Cellar. Event chair and NOW Magazine style editor Andrew Sardone approached the pair about creating arrangements for the ’60s space-themed fund-raiser for Windfall Clothing. “He gave us a few ideas about the look they were going for, but he didn’t have anything specific in mind. We did a very colourful arrangement with really abstract, harder-edged flowers, and it was a hit,” Perri says.
Mojtahedi says the pair is careful to take their clients into consideration during the design process. “What’s their character? What’s their taste? Are they a bit more conservative? I think those are the key things to consider,” she says. “The most important thing for me is being able to work one-on-one with our client. When you’re dealing with a business it should have a personal level to it. And we really enjoy it … it makes me happy. I think flowers are naturally like a happy pill.”
