New Bloom with FLORIST NYC

September 21, 2021

Melbourne-raised and New York-based, George Banks has overridden the saying “there’s nothing new under the sun.” His leather goods brand, Florist New York has recreated that same feeling you get when you receive flowers from a loved one. Anyone deemed “cool” has adopted Banks’ embroidered bag as a staple for walking down the streets of New York. With no prior experience Banks created his brand from the ground up and called it a “happy accident.”Originally starting out as a side hustle, Florist has literally blossomed into a sort of community that brings color into everyone’s lives.

Before the year that shall not be named, most small businesses were flourishing and Florist was no exception. Buying a bag was as lovely of an experience as buying a bouquet. As the world went into a frenzy, Florist adapted to the new environment and subsequently continues to grow as a brand.

Interview by Kerane Marcellus
Photos by Logan Jackson

Designer George Banks speaks with office about the journey Florist NYC has made and is continuing to take.

How’s it going? How are you?

Good, good. A Monday morning.

Yeah, I feel you. So, When did you decide to start a brand?

Well, it started, like, a bit under three years ago. I was an operations manager for a menswear label here in Brooklyn. It was like a small business with a pretty small team and after hours, we had a factory in Bushwick with a whole bunch of old machines and I taught myself to embroider, after hours, just to sort of make some money on the side. I figured the best sort of vehicle for embroidery was a bag because then people are walking around with it. I felt like that was a good product that I could sell. And so then it just turned into Florists, that's sort of how it all started.

Were you always into art and design growing up? How'd you get into fashion?

I was. Yeah, I've been into art, into painting. My grandma was a painter and sculptor. I've always been into not so much like fashion, but definitely into, accessorizing clothing, like chopping clothes up and just sort of adding personal detail to clothes I had. So that's sort of where the embroidery also comes in. I just like adding things to clothes, accessories, things like that. It wasn't like fashion design, I never studied fashion design.

So, how did you end up learning the technique of working with leather?

I've sort of just learned things as I go, I'm all self-taught. One of the guys that rented some space in the factory that I was working at, he was a leather goods guy and he gave me a base pattern, a base for a bag. That was sort of how it all started. I started to learn a bit about how to construct bags using base templates and it developed from there. All the products I make now are kind of limited to what I’m capable of doing. I have some leather machines but I don’t have certain machines to make different shapes, so that's sort of why I started the braided bags, because I can hand sew those as opposed to sew them on a machine. It's always developing I’m just trying to learn more things as they go. That's sort of why I have like a utilitarian silhouette. It's all these like square shapes and pretty simple shapes. I like the classic look of them also.

I noticed that your brand is unisex rather than menswear or womenswear. What was the thought process behind that choice?

I just don't think that it should be specific to gender. Like, say the baby bag that I make is, you know, a cute little silhouette and small tiny bags were a huge thing a year or so ago but, I've found that like that lots of guys buy those bags also. I would like anyone to be able to buy or feel like they could wear the bags I make.

I definitely agree. How’d you come up with the name Florist?

It was really hard, honestly. I felt like I was trying to figure out a name for six months, and I had just a long list of potential names, and they were multiple pages long. I would think of one name and then I would riff on that and swap things around. So, that would lead to like five other names. Then the next day or later on, I would have another thought and that would be another five but, then I was working at a studio in Chinatown. I kept noticing all these florists and just the different variations of florists. I just found it to be an interesting name and I felt like the product I was making is quite colorful and when someone buys a product like that, whether it's for themselves or for a friend, it's kind of like an expression of your emotions. It's a positive happy, colorful object. And I feel like that similarly to flowers or a bouquet, or whatever you buy, it's an expression of emotions. And so that sort of led me to calling it Florist. And obviously, I like flowers as imagery. I feel like it's good for everyone really; I feel like everyone likes flowers.

Why Melbourne, AU to New York?

Well, New York because the first place I traveled to by myself when I was 21. I came and did a summer program here. I was studying fine art digital photography at school. And I just, I loved it. I love the diversity of the city and I love how everyone is just having a go at something, you know, like, you just put whatever you have into your projects or your passions and just kind of like see how it goes. I felt like that was super inspiring. And then the opportunity came up to work and do an internship at this company. And one thing led to another and I've always loved New York. Honestly, for me, it was the people that have just like with no filter. I found when I first came here, as a 21-year-old, being on the train or just walking down the street, whether you're humming a tune or whatever you're doing, you don't think that anyone is listening to you, you just feel like every single other person, but then, someone will just come up to you and say, “I like your tune man,” or comment on something that you're doing, and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I just found that to be a real captivating element. And coming from Melbourne, it's, very, very small in comparison to New York, obviously. Australians people are definitely happy people and pretty comfortable talking to strangers and things like that, but definitely not like New York.

What's next for Florist?

I just want it to keep growing. I would love to do some clothing and some home goods. It's hard to know, kind of what I want it to be because it's just constantly developing, and it's developing, like, under my arm. I have to learn how to do something in order for it to come to fruition. It's sort of just month by month, especially after COVID, everything sort of shifted a bit. I felt like I was on one trajectory and then all of a sudden, the world kind of stopped, and you sort of have to look at what you have, and how you can build that. So, that sort of led to me introducing more embroidery into my work and trying to grow my customer base. I'm developing some home goods like pillows, and I was sort of developing some linen, and then just a few pieces of clothing to start and see how that goes. I would love for Florist to be sort of an all-encompassing home goods, handbags, and some simpler clothing items. I've always loved ceramics. And I feel like that's a no brainer, really, if we're called Florist, obviously, flowers need something to go in. I'd love to develop ceramics. There's lots more growth to be had with the bags, and I'm just sort of pushing it and trying to develop some new silhouettes and get better with my construction and making the products, just elevating them more. I want them to be really high quality. So, it always takes a bit to learn how to do that sort of thing. So yeah, I'm just gonna just keep going with it a see what happens, really.

That’s really cool. I’ve never seen a bag like yours before.

That's awesome. I love that. I feel like that’s partly to do with my naivety, in that, I'm trying to do something that I'm not technically trained in. I think the byproduct of that is these bags that aren’t too similar to anything else that's available I guess that's a lucky thing. It's a happy accident, the whole thing. I love the way it makes people feel.

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After 30 years and over 100 cult fragrances, COMME DES GARÇONS PARFUMS 1994–2025 BY SIMONETT & BAER launches this month

December 17, 2024

“I have to add that the topic is, of course, an irrational one, because it's not art and it's not fashion. It has to do with scent, which is something in the air,” explains Dino Simonett, renowned art-book maker and designer/publisher of the new COMME des GARÇONS x SIMONETT & BAER book, which details 30 years of CDG perfumes.

“The moment you smell something is irrational,” he continues. “This book transports you and brings you to the idea behind the perfumes. People have gotten thousands of art catalogues from me, but this fucking perfume thing really drives people a little bit crazy, you know? Because everybody has this bottle; and that bottle smells like this on them; and this bottle I need; and all the memories and everything. I like it a lot that we made this.”

As fans and family of the world’s coolest brand prepared to gather at Dover Street Parfums Market in Paris to celebrate the launch of the book, our Editor-At-Large Paige Silveria shared some coffee and cigarettes with Simonett to discuss his wild trajectory, making books with Joseph Beuys and Tilda Swinton early on, and the importance of nonconformal thinking.

By Paige Silveria

This fucking perfume thing really drives people a little bit crazy.

Paige Silveria: Tell me about yourself. You make books.

Dino Simonett: My books are my art. Each book might be a painting or sculpture. And you should not do the same sculpture all the time. When you hike somewhere, you never should go the same way back home — this is something my mother taught me when I was young. In the same way, it's boring to make the same stuff all the time. So I try to find a way to invent my own language.

PS: This book you’ve made is really beautiful.

DS: It’s hyperrealistic larger-than-life images of boxes and flacons in an endless row presented on paper the thickness of a children’s book.

PS: I loved how it said in the press release that you woke up one Sunday morning and the idea for the book suddenly came to you.

DS: The backstory is that Remo Hallauer [COO of COMME des GARÇONS International] is a true book lover. We met at the Offprint book fair in Paris. And one day, shortly after peak COVID, this email came from him asking if I’d think about a possible collaboration with one of the young stars here — and no hard feelings, but it didn’t work out. So then, as it is in life, which is the essential thing, you have to have an idea. And most of the time, they’re not good enough. You have to have another and another and then you go, Ah ha! Perfume.

PS: And you’d already been pretty familiar with their fragrances?

DS: I’ve known this stuff since the beginning. I wore the first perfume they created. It was part of my life all the time, and I thought, It's so funny. There’s a connection with how I make the books: like two, three books a year, all collaborations and each is different. Just like their perfumes. So I immediately texted Remo.

PS: And what perfect timing, with the 30-year anniversary.

DS: Yes, but this was two years ago or so. I hadn’t had the jubilee in mind. It might not look like much, but there was a lot of work to do.

PS: Many of the advertisements and images weren’t archived, physically or digitally, right? You had to search all over for a good portion of the material?

DS: Well we also had to wait for the official deal to go through in the beginning. Adrian Joffe [President of COMME des GARÇONS International and Dover Street Market International] wanted to do it but he didn’t have the mind space at the time; they were about to open the Dover Street Market here in Paris. So we were on our own for a bit, developing the project from zero. We looked all over the Internet and tried to create the chronology. I had a young guy helping me. He kept reminding me to be patient and to continue to work on growing the book. The door was open, but we had to wait in front of the next room. So we took little steps to prepare ourselves. And stuff slowly worked out.

PS: And thank God for the Internet.

DS: Yes, because as you mentioned, there was no archive. We thought surely they’d have something in the basement. But no, that didn’t exist. At one point they sent us a list of all the perfumes so we had a clear checklist to manage. I had to become an expert.

PS: There are so many, over 100?

DS: Yeah, and at one point the CDG team was activated. It was like a machine and in the spring suddenly a load of stuff was coming. First we had to grow the grapes, then make the wine and then the grappa. And at the end, it's a really strong grappa. And so things came together, and then one day Adrian said, “All is fine, but Rei [Kawakubo] must now also approve it. This is how the system works.” But nobody had told me! So Remo met with Rei to show her the book.

PS: That’s a bit of pressure!

DS: She could have said no and we’d have to throw everything in the garbage, two years of work. There was indeed a little bit of pressure. But it was fine. She liked the book. Then at the end of this summer we met again and they asked if they could have some of the finished copies on 20 November in Tokyo. I said, “I’m sorry, what?” He was thinking that the book was finished, you know? I told him we still needed a lot of material to finish it. Sometimes it's nice though to have this pressure. It's motivating and thrilling when you finally accomplish it all.

PS: Let’s go back. How did your upbringing inform who you are?

DS: It has to do with nonconformal thinking. Most people think the same. And we’re constantly pressured as well, by everything around us to conform. You have to really fight to keep your head and so I had this upbringing with this rather eccentric mother who was absolutely nonconformistic in every way. She was resolute. Why should we follow the path of the masses? It was never my thing. Voilà.

PS: How were you in school?

DS: I was not so good at school. I was only skateboarding at that time. I was on the Swiss National Team. I even was here in Paris at a European championship when I was 15 at the Trocadero. And my mother said, “You are not going to school anymore. You need an apprenticeship. It makes no sense to send you to school any longer.” I was independent and had my first salary at 16.

PS: What were you doing?

DS: I was a carpenter making tables, chairs, all that stuff. All my friends went to high school with like 16-week holidays, while I had only four. And so it was really, really tough shit for a 16 year old. But I learned two important things. The first one was discipline; seven o'clock each day it started and lasted nine hours. And the second thing was precision; you have to do things right. People always said to me that the apprenticeship was good as I’d really use it for the rest of my life. And I always thought that was such bullshit. But actually, it's kind of true. And so anyways, the moment I finished my apprenticeship, the very last day of the last test, I went on the Interrail for one month and never went back to a carpenter shop.

PS: What’d you do after?

DS: I wrote a letter to this very super famous music guy, Claude Nobs who was organizing the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, telling him I’d like to work there that summer. I mentioned that I’d just finished my apprenticeship for carpentry. He phoned me back immediately after getting the letter. He said, “Oh you’re a carpenter? You can come right now.” He was renovating his apartment in Montreux. So I stayed and worked there alone while he was up at his chalet. I felt like Kevin McCallister from Home Alone in this completely furnished apartment. And then the festival started, and there was this guy from New York doing a large mural painting. It was Keith Haring. I had no idea who he was. We became friends. Then I met George Benson and Herbie Hancock. It started from nothing and then one thing comes, another thing comes, another thing comes. This is how I started, which is maybe not the natural way. But I was following my intuition and taking chances and putting myself out there.

PS: And you're going after what you have a passion for.

DS: I think that’s the best way to live one's life. It was like my own private art school. I met all the guys I was totally hot about. I met Joseph Beuys and told him I wanted to do an art project with him. I got his number and he told me to ask for his assistant. But I took everything for granted, what people said to me. So I had this phone number in Berlin. And I called the guy 20 times until this fucking meeting with Beuys finally happened. And we met and made a small collaboration art magazine called “Quer.” You just have to stick to the stuff.

PS: Wow. You don't still have one of those copies around, do you?

DS: I had one and I brought it to Remo at one of our meetings. Adrian saw it and immediately took it … I hope he gave it back to Remo. Adrian has a pile of my stuff that he wanted to see, so that’s good.

PS: Yeah, of any coffee table in the world for it to be displayed, his is probably in the top 10.

DS: So then I decided my dream was to be a film director. There was a film school in Berlin that I applied to. They only took about 18 people from 600. We waited all week to see this list on the wall for the final call back meeting. And my name wasn’t there. I was like, “Shit!” And then a week later, I received a letter saying I’d been accepted. Later the director told me it was clear enough with my application and the art magazine I’d sent that I’d be accepted. I don’t say this to brag. I say this to tell you that every young person that wants to go somewhere, all they have to do is fight. You have to get out of your house and your small town and your comfort zone and all that shit.

PS: I agree. So you’ve made films?

DS: I made a feature movie and went to the film festival. It was really amazing and everything, but I was not Tarantino, you know? So it’s the last semester and Tilda Swinton is supposed to teach a seminar. I really wanted to attend it. It would be the cherry on top of the cake. Then she postponed it once, then twice. The third time, I’m on the tube and there’s a woman in front of me with a newspaper that says that Tilda’s super mentor, Derek Jarman, had passed away. It’s the very Monday morning that her seminar is set to begin. And I thought, Oh shit. She’s not going to be there. But then she was there after all and it was a fantastic week. There were only five of us students and we all fell in love with her. And she fell in love with us. I’ve known her since.

PS: I can only imagine. How’d you make the transition into books?

DS: You have to find out what you're really good at. I had long discussions with this guru, an old guy who was a very diligent, very bright guy. I was really miserable, feeling directionless. He asked me why I wasn’t continuing with filmmaking. And I couldn't give him an answer. Then he said right into my face, “Probably it’s because you’re not good enough.” The message was one-hundred percent received. It was a relief; I'm not a bad person. This guy told me the truth, and I could accept it. And when you can do this, you can figure out what you actually want to do, what you’re actually good at. I started making books. I made one with another film director. And we visited Tilda at her hotel, bringing one to her as a present. As we’re knocking, I thought to myself, If I did another book focused on people in this business, it’d have to be her. And she opens the door, looks at the book and says, “Oh, I would like to have a book like this on me.”

PS: These situations seem unreal.

DS: I spent five years on her book, which was an enormous success. It included stills from all her films and launched it in different cities. Fantastic shit.

PS: And now you’ve just released this soon-to-be iconic CDG book.

DS: I've learned to be patient; things can take you years. This book with Adrian and Remo took two years and I didn’t even know if it was going to be approved! Follow your dreams as much as you can. It's not so important which dream it is exactly. If I see a step in front of me, I try to take each chance I get. This is what I wish for everybody, in whatever situation you find yourself, start to do something with nothing. This book started with just a simple idea. You can not find anything like this on the Internet, this compilation, this narrative. It’s something we had to bring together with enormous work. And here we are. I think in our digital, splattered times sometimes you have to make something which is real. That you can sit with and focus on in silence and really take time alone with it.