Lifestyle
The L.A. Flower District is full of surprises. Here’s a DIY guide for newbies
• The Los Angeles Flower District features more than 70 vendors in two neighboring markets downtown — the Original Los Angeles Flower Market and the Southern California Flower Market.
• Combined, the two markets are a vast kaleidoscope of natural and unnatural (i.e. human-altered) blooms, such as perfect roses dyed black and Dodger blue.
• The savings can be significant over retail bouquets, but whether it’s a DIYer’s dream or nightmare depends on planning ahead — and being bold.
Flowers are ubiquitous in Southern California and so easy to procure, from the buckets of seasonal blooms at your local supermarket to the gaudy $5 bouquets hawked at many freeway off-ramps.
But there are times when off-the-rack arrangements just won’t cut it. You need serious flowers — distinctive, unusual and befitting a special occasion.
You could go to a florist or floral designer and pay them to do the honors. Or, like many enterprising DIYers, you could go to L.A.’s downtown Flower District, save some money and — gulp — do your flowers yourself.
Stanley Hudson, an Emmy-nominated costume designer for “blackish” and “Grown-ish,” browses greens to complete an arrangement for his 15-person dinner party.
That’s what Stanley Hudson was up to the morning before a dinner party he was hosting for 15 friends. At 9:30 a.m at the Original Los Angeles Flower Market, his arms were full of cone-shaped paper bundles, and he was making a final purchase of greenery to finish off his distinctive display.
Hudson is a costume designer — an “Emmy-nominated costume designer,” he noted gravely, with a twinkle in his eye, so he’s not one to do things halfway. This was a special dinner party with dear friends, and a supermarket bouquet wasn’t going to cut it.
So he made a quick, early-morning trip to the flower district and visited his favorite vendors at the Original Los Angeles Flower Market and across Wall Street at the Southern California Flower Market.
“I usually go with the smaller vendors who buy from the smaller farms, because they give you the better deal,” he said, browsing for filler greens at one of his favorites — Eliseo Valle’s stall #15 at the Original Los Angeles Flower Market — which specializes in locally grown greens and fillers, such as stems of dried, almost translucent pink bougainvillea flowers.
People whisked around Hudson pulling wagons piled high with blooms or balancing large bundles of bouquets on their shoulders. Several were making video calls, discussing the flowers available that day. In between the customers, vendors were constantly on the move, expertly moving buckets of flowers from nearby coolers onto the floor or stripping faded petals and leaves from new bunches of flowers.
The markets open around 4 a.m. for wholesale buyers and to the general public at 8 a.m. By 9 a.m., most shoppers are non-trade people, sporting the narrow stickers indicating they’ve paid their $2 admission fee (which allows access into both markets) to browse and buy.
Top left, Scabiosa stellata display their unique look. Top right, colorful gerberas on display. Lower, imported tulips burst with color at the Original Los Angeles Flower Market in Los Angeles.
Long Beach Realtors Loree Scarborough and Tessa Owen were holding several fat bundles of blue hydrangeas around 8:30 a.m. while considering long stems of orange ranunculus for a client appreciation event later that day. The bouquets they made would be gifts for their clients, Owen said. Her trick to making the arrangements was having a base centered on hydrangeas but being open to any special accent flowers that caught her eye.
“You have to be adventurous,” said Levi Snyder, a florist who dashed into the market around 9 a.m. to pick up more flowers for a last-minute order. As a professional flower seller, he appreciates his customers, “but our typical client is not adventurous,” he said. DIYers have an advantage if they want unique floral displays “because the big guys aren’t necessarily doing those kinds of arrangements … if you want to stand out and be an individual, don’t be afraid to be bold.”
Long Beach Realtors Tessa Owen, left, and Loree Scarborough made a quick early trip downtown to get hydrangeas and other flowers for a client appreciation event later that day.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Nearby, bride-to-be Emily Marriott was intent on saving money. She had four people in tow — her fiancé, David Cohen, along with her mom, sister and future sister-in-law — to help carry all the flowers she was purchasing for their small wedding at Pasadena City Hall the next day. Everyone in her group was laden with two or three cone-shaped bundles — a couple dozen each of ranunculus, sweet peas, lisianthus, Queen Anne’s lace, spray roses and large roses in ivory and white.
Marriott is a commercial interior designer who now lives in Portland, Ore., but grew up in Arcadia. As her group stood by juggling their parcels, I asked if she had any tips for people doing their own wedding flowers.
“Don’t,” blurted her mother, Rebecca Marriott, who laughed along with everyone else, but kept sneaking anxious peeks at her watch. The big event, after all, was less than 24 hours away.
But Emily had a plan. She’s been visiting the flower market for years, and had previously made arrangements for family events and bridal showers. She knew she wanted all-white bouquets. She’d already ordered her vases online, and she wasn’t willing to spend the thousands of dollars she’d been quoted to have someone else prepare all the flowers for the wedding and reception with 28 guests.
Orchids are always a popular plant at the Original Los Angeles Flower Market.
She did have someone else make her bridal bouquet, but despite the last-minute pressure, doing the other flowers herself “is just astronomically less [money],” she said. “You have to have a vision, at least, when you get here, but there’s a lot of inspiration on Pinterest that’s amazing. If you know how many bouquets or centerpieces you need, you just have to find enough blooms for each arrangement.”
They ended up spending about $550 to create the six large arrangements that would line the wedding aisle and were later moved to the reception dinner table, “but they only used about $350 worth of the flowers,” Sarah Marriott, Emily’s sister and maid of honor, reported the following week, after the wedding couple had left for their honeymoon. “We also made a flower crown and had a basket of petals for the flower girl, and we still had enough flowers left over that I was able to make four or five large arrangements” for friends and family.
The Original Los Angeles Flower Market official entrance on Wall Street, and the Southern California Flower Market directly across the street make up the bulk of the Los Angeles Flower District. The markets have been in business for over 100 years.
Even though they bought more flowers than they used for the wedding, Sarah said the savings were considerable. “Emily was quoted $250 per arrangement [if a florist did the work]. She also said most florists had a $7,000 to $15,000 minimum, so it was challenging to even find a florist to take on a smaller wedding.”
Are you inspired yet? Maybe you’re planning a wedding, a large family gathering or just want to go all-out for the holidays. The Los Angeles Flower District is a great place to explore and get inspired, but advance footwork is crucial for success.
Visit at least twice
The six large floral arrangements that Emily Marriott made for her small wedding after shopping at the Original Los Angeles Flower Market the day before. She used the arrangements to line the aisle during the actual wedding and then decorate the table during the reception dinner that night. Marriott was quoted a price of $250 each for six arrangements from a florist; instead, she spent $550 on several dozen white ranunculus, sweet peas, lisianthus, Queen Anne’s lace, spray roses and large roses. (Sarah Mleynek Photography)
Here are some tips for navigating L.A.’s flower markets.
The choices at the flower district can sometimes feel overwhelming, like this colorful swirl of ranunculus, so before you buy for a special event, scout out your options first and then make a plan.
Consider the first visit an inspirational scouting trip. Marriott visited the market a month before her wedding to get ideas and find out what flowers would be available the day before her wedding. You don’t have to go that far in advance, but unless you’re a regular market visitor, make sure to tour both markets at least a day before you’re ready to buy, to discuss prices and availability with the vendors.
Browse the several shops at the market that sell everything you need for floral arrangements, from wreath frames to flower food (important for pre-soaking, see below) to vases, ribbons and bows. You may end up buying your vases at a thrift store or online, but wholesale accessory stores like Moskatels at the Original Los Angeles Flower Market and GM Floral Co., which covers the second floor of the Southern California Flower Market as well as a much smaller space at the original market, can provide inspiration too.
Vendor talk is vital
Don’t just assume the flowers that are there today will be available next week. If you see something you love, talk to the vendor to make sure they’ll have more the day you’re ready to purchase.
Make a plan
Armed with what you’ve learned, decide how many arrangements your event will need, create a budget and then decide on a color scheme and your main anchor flowers, such as giant mauve proteas, fluffy balls of hydrangeas or dependably lovely roses, which come fresh, dried or preserved — a process that keeps them pliable and long lasting — in a stunning array of colors.
Left, sliced log slabs make decorative plates and platters. Right, colorful displays at the Original Los Angeles Flower Market.
Figure out how many anchor flowers you’ll need, and roughly how many filler stems — such as greens, draping clusters of amaranth or smaller flowers like baby’s breath — are required to make each arrangement. Just be sure to leave a little room in your budget for magic; a bold flower you might have missed the first time can make your arrangement pop.
Go early
A woman who makes funeral wreaths pulls a cart overflowing with flowers and accessories.
Admission is $2 for the general public (a.k.a. “non-trade” people), which gives you a sticker that provides entry into both markets. The hours are a little trickier.
Technically, trade people with wholesale badges can shop between 4 and 8 a.m. Monday through Saturday; the markets are open to the public from 8 a.m. to noon (except Saturdays when public entry starts at 6 a.m.), but even the vendors and ticket takers can’t seem to agree on whether you have to be a wholesaler with a badge to buy before 8 a.m.
Sonja Rei Strand, marketing director for the Original Los Angeles Flower Market, said it’s safest to follow the admission times on the website (which are different than the signs posted over the entrance). But one vendor told me, “If they pay their $2 to get in, they can buy whenever they want.” You have been warned.
Either way, make sure you get there at least by 8 a.m. because some vendors start loading up to close as early as 11 a.m., and time passes quickly when you’re in the thrall of flowers.
Bring help — and water
Both markets have their own parking structures and there are other parking lots around them, charging about $10 to $12, depending on the day. (Most only accept cash.) You’ll definitely get your steps in visiting these markets, so if you have to go alone, bring a wagon or cart to carry all your flowers, because even a couple of those paper-wrapped flower cones quickly get unwieldy as you’re walking around. And try to keep them upright, so they don’t get smooshed by the other bundles while you‘re making your rounds.
Also, bring buckets half full of water in your car, to keep the flowers hydrated during your drive home. And be sure to get those flowers home or into a cool place as soon as possible. Marriott had a bucket station in her sister’s basement, where she immediately put her flowers after getting home from the market.
Flower-arranging expert Linda Prendergast recommends pre-soaking by putting your freshly cut stems in warm (not hot) water for 12 to 24 hours before you start your arrangements, with Floral Life Crystal Clear flower food added to the water to keep them well hydrated and looking fresh. (You can also find Floral Life products at the wholesale accessory stores.)
The Original Los Angeles Flower Market is a colorful collection of flowers and accessories in downtown Los Angeles.
Bring cash
Some vendors add an extra fee for credit card charges under $50; if you plan to spend many hundreds of dollars, a debit or credit card should be fine, but if you just want a smaller display for a dinner party, you can save yourself some dough by paying in cash. Ask your vendors about this when you’re scouting.
When Marian Sherry Lurio and Jonathan Buffington Nguyen met at a mutual friend’s wedding at Higgins Lake, Mich., in July 2022, both felt an immediate chemistry. As the evening progressed, they sat on the shore of the lake in Adirondack chairs under the stars, where they had their first kiss before joining others for a midnight plunge.
The two learned that the following weekend Ms. Lurio planned to attend a wedding in Philadelphia, where Mr. Nguyen lives, and before they had even exchanged numbers, they already had a first date on the books.
“I have a vivid memory of after we first met,” Mr. Nguyen said, “just feeling like I really better not screw this up.”
Before long, they were commuting between Philadelphia and New York City, where Ms. Lurio lives, spending weekends and the odd remote work days in one another’s apartments in Philadelphia and Manhattan. Within the first six months of dating, Mr. Nguyen joined Ms. Lurio’s family for Thanksgiving in Villanova, Pa., and, the following month, she met his family in Beavercreek, Ohio, at a surprise birthday party for Mr. Nguyen’s mother.
Ms. Lurio, 32, who grew up in Merion Station outside Philadelphia, works in investor relations administration at Flexpoint Ford, a private equity firm. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology.
Mr. Nguyen, also 32, was born in Knoxville, Tenn., and raised in Beavercreek, Ohio, from the age of 7. He graduated from Haverford College with a bachelor’s degree in political science and is now a director at Doyle Real Estate Advisors in Philadelphia.
Their long-distance relationship continued for the next few years. There were dates in Manhattan, vacations and beach trips to the Jersey Shore. They attended sporting events and discovered their shared appreciation of the 2003 film, “Love Actually.”
One evening, Mr. Nguyen recalled looking around Ms. Lurio’s small New York studio — strewed with clothes and the takeout meal they had ordered — and feeling “so comfortable and safe.” “I knew that this was something different than just sort of a fling,” he said.
It was an open question when they would move in together. In 2024, Ms. Lurio began the process of moving into Mr. Nguyen’s home in Philadelphia — even bringing her cat, Scott — but her plans changed midway when an opportunity arose to expand her role with her current employer.
Mr. Nguyen was on board with her decision. “It almost feels like stolen valor to call it ‘long distance,’ because it’s so easy from Philadelphia to New York,” Mr. Nguyen said. “The joke is, it’s easier to get to Philly from New York than to get to some parts of Brooklyn from Manhattan, right?”
In January 2025, Mr. Nguyen visited Ms. Lurio in New York with more up his sleeve than spending the weekend. Together they had discussed marriage and bespoke rings, but when Mr. Nguyen left Ms. Lurio and an unfinished cheese plate at the bar of the Chelsea Hotel that Friday evening, she had no idea what was coming next.
“I remember texting Jonathan,” Ms. Lurio said, bewildered: “‘You didn’t go toward the bathroom!’” When a Lobby Bar server came and asked her to come outside, Ms. Lurio still didn’t realize what was happening until she was standing in the hallway, where Mr. Nguyen stood recreating a key moment from the film “Love Actually,” in which one character silently professes his love for another in writing by flashing a series of cue cards. There, in the storied Chelsea Hotel hallway still festooned with Christmas decorations, Mr. Nguyen shared his last card that said, “Will you marry me?”
They wed on April 11 in front of 200 guests at the Pump House, a covered space on the banks of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River. Mr. Nguyen’s sister, the Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, who is ordained through the Unitarian Universalist Association, officiated.
Although formal attire was suggested, Ms. Lurio said that the ceremony was “pretty casual.” She and Jonathan got ready together, and their families served as their wedding parties.
“I said I wanted a five-minute wedding,” Ms. Lurio recalled, though the ceremony ended up lasting a little longer than that. During the ceremony, Ms. Nguyen read a homily and jokingly added that guests should not ask the bride and groom about their living arrangements, which will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
While watching Ms. Lurio walk down the aisle, flanked by her parents, Mr. Nguyen said he remembered feeling at once grounded in the moment and also a sense of dazed joy: “Like, is this real? I felt very lucky in that moment — and also just excited for the party to start!”
He always texted when he was outside. No call, no knock. It was just a message and then the soft sound of my door opening. He moved like someone practiced in disappearing.
His name meant “complete” in Arabic, which is what I felt when we were together.
I met him the way you meet most things that matter in Los Angeles — without intending to. In our senior year at a college in eastern L.A. County, we were introduced through mutual friends, then thrown together by the particular gravity of people who recognized something in each other. He was a Muslim medical student, conservative and careful and funny in the dry, precise way of someone who has always had to choose his words. I was loud where he was quiet, messy where he was disciplined. I was out. He was not.
I understood, or thought I did. I thought that I couldn’t get hurt if I was completely conscious throughout the endeavor. Los Angeles has a way of making you feel like the whole world shares your freedoms — until you realize the city is enormous, and not all of it belongs to you in the same way.
For months, our world was confined to my apartment. He would slip in after dark, and we’d stay up late talking about his family in Iran, classical music and the particular pressure of being the son someone sacrificed everything to bring here. He told me things he said he’d never told anyone, and I believed him.
The orange glow from my Nesso lamp lit his face while the indigo sky pressed against the window behind him. In our small little world, we were safe. Outside was another matter.
On our first real date, I took him to the L.A. Phil’s “An Evening of Film & Music: From Mexico to Hollywood” program. I told him they were cheap seats even though they were the first row on the terrace. He was thrilled in the way only someone who doesn’t expect to be delighted actually gets delighted — fully, without guarding it. I put my arm around his shoulders. At some point, I shifted and moved it, and he nudged it back. He was OK with PDA here.
I remember thinking that wealth is a great barrier to harm and then feeling silly for extrapolating my own experience once again. Inside Walt Disney Concert Hall, we were just two people in love with the same music.
Outside was still another matter.
In February, on Valentine’s Day, he took me to a Yemeni restaurant in Anaheim. We hovered over saffron tea surrounded by other young Southern Californians, and we looked like friends. Before we went in, we sat in the parking lot of the strip mall — signs in Arabic advertising bread, coffee, halal meats, the Little Arabia District — hand in hand. I leaned over to kiss him.
“Not here,” he said. His eyes shifted furtively. “Someone might see.”
I understood, or told myself I did, but I was saddened. Later, after the kind of reflection that only arrives in the wreckage, I would understand something harder: I had been unconsciously asking him to choose, over and over, between the people he loved and the person he loved. I had a long pattern of choosing unavailable men, telling myself it was because I could handle the complexity. The truth was more embarrassing. I thought that if someone like him chose me anyway — chose me over the weight of societal expectations — it would mean I was worth choosing. It took me a long time to see how unfair that was to him and to me.
We went to the Norton Simon Museum together in November, on the kind of gray Pasadena day when the 210 Freeway roars in the background like white noise. He studied for the MCAT while I wrote a paper on Persian rugs. In between practice problems, he translated ancient Arabic scripts for me. I thought, “We make a good team.” Afterward, we walked through the galleries and he didn’t let go of my arm.
That was the version of us I kept returning to — when the ending came during Ramadan. It arrived as a spiritual reflection of my own. I texted: “Does this end at graduation — whatever we are doing?”
He thought I meant Ramadan. I did not mean Ramadan.
“I care about you,” he wrote, “but I don’t want you to think this could work out to anything more than just dating. I mean, of course, I’ve fantasized about marrying you. If I could live my life the way I wanted, of course I would continue. I’m just sad it’s not in this lifetime.”
I was in Mexico City when these texts were exchanged. That night I flew to Oaxaca to clear my head and then, after less than 24 hours, flew back to L.A. No amount of vacation would allow me to process what had just happened, so I threw myself back into work.
My therapist told me to use the conjunction “and” instead of “but.” It happened, and I am changed. The harm I caused and the love I felt. The beauty of what we made and the impossibility of where it could go. She gave me a knowing smile when I asked if it would stay with me forever. She didn’t answer, which was the answer.
I think about the freeways now, the way Joan Didion called them our only secular communion. When you’re on the ground in Los Angeles, the world narrows to the few blocks around you. Get on the freeway and you understand the whole body of the city at once: the arteries, the pulse, the scale of the thing.
You understand that you are a single cell in something enormous and moving. It is all out of your control. I am in a lane. The lane shaped how I drive. He was simply in a different lane, and his lane shaped him, and those two facts can coexist without either of us being the villain of the sad story.
He came like a secret in the night, and he left the same way. What we made in between was real and complicated and mine to hold forever, hoping we find each other in the next life.
The author lives in Los Angeles.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.
When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.
Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.
“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.
Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.
The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.
Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”
Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.
Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.
Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.
More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.
The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.
“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”
Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”
Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”
True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.
“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”
Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.
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