Mira Mikati is his florist’s best customer. “It makes or breaks my day, so I go early in the morning two or three times a week before a Pilates class,” the designer said over tea at Toraya during Paris Fashion Week. “Once I’ve tackled fashion, I’ll probably open a Japanese tea shop and a flower shop with sweets, because we don’t have that in London,” she said, pausing.
While Café Mira took shape, the designer presented a collection of flower beds for spring. 3D blooms on a sweater, a belt and a white sundress; as sequined pansies on jammies; A bouquet of hollyhocks, daisies, anemones and magnolias arranged herbarium-style on a “Floriste” sweatshirt included some of her perennial favorites; and negative space in the form of laser cut-outs on the grass green shorts and top ensemble. A denim jacket had floral stoles embroidered on the back, and even a trench coat had little pieces of flowers, butterflies, hearts, and clouds.
Mikati is loving wearing knitwear this season, for example a handmade crochet cardigan with patches or a joyful mashup of rainbow stripes, like this one on a rainbow skirt turned on the bias with beaded stripes (“When it’s of high quality, even when it’s hot you don’t fry,” she said). Also kawaii: an orange cashmere sweater embroidered with tiny bunny wagashi, as served at her favorite meeting spot in Paris. But it was the back of a striped shirt that best expressed Mikati’s lifestyle: “Stay close to people who feel like sunshine.”
With all this color swirling, it’s easy to overlook the fact that Mikati has added a new color for spring, displayed here in the last image in the form of an otherwise embellished sundress. “I’ve never used red, but it’s starting to grow on me,” she said. “I find it glamorous and a really big statement, so at first I thought, why not?” It was the kind of one-off task that makes vacation packing a breeze.
