Same As It Ever Was…
Back a million years ago now literally in another world of pre-covid, pre-live-streamed-genocide, even pre Brexit (by a hair’s breadth), there was a high-end wedding at the place I worked. It was a fairly intense few days for the garden team. It was policy to use everything from the garden for the house and related events and being early summer, things were just beginning to ramp up. I remember the requirement being rich tones with acid greens. The few of us who “did stuff with flowers” spent the couple of days leading up to the big day picking, conditioning and arranging displays for the various dinner tables, bedrooms, halls, buttonholes, bouquet and flower girl posies. We separated the jobs out and tackled an element each. I got the bedrooms, one big vase and the flower girl posies.
The day before the event a handful of the “main guests” skipped in and out of the flower room making vague attempts at creating things for the wedding. Obviously, we let them crack on since they were paying our wages, it was our job and you know, we’re grown-ups. An hour later and a fairly sad attempt at something with over-mature sweet peas and the A-listers got bored and left us to it. We did the things, everyone had a jolly lovely time, end of. I heard that the wedding later appeared in Vogue magazine, but didn’t see it until I got bored this morning and thought I’d google it for the laugh.
Then I saw this
with some fluff about how the A-lister friends of the happy couple, despite suffering from jet-lag, made beautiful arrangements for the event…… (these are the flower-girl posies wot I did))…
I don’t really give a crap. It just intrigues me how, once people reach a certain level of privilege some are happy to claim the work of others as their own or at least don’t correct their own circle when the assumption is made that THEY did the thing.. on their own.. because they’re unbelievably amazinnnnng… dahhhhlinnnnnggg…
To be fair this particular case is probably due more to the runaway glorified hole-smoke-blowy-uppy journalism than any explicit claim by particular people (more generously spirited than my usual self I know). But the point is; it’s the same old shit, round and round and round.. those that work in horticulture in big houses have always been shafted like this. All the generations of grafters through history creating gardens for land-owners, the work including stocking the big house with flowers and produce that are celebrated by guests and plastered up as advertising to draw visitors, yet, somehow the related ulilation is never handed down in any sort of reward to those that create it. This is how the world works. This example is a microcosm of how EVERYTHING is set up! The wealthy party and state what they want, the rest of us do the work and sort shit out and let the big boys and girls take the credit.. hey-ho!
LOOK! I did a thing that appeared in Vogue though! .. that’s kind of cool! Go me! Can’t put it on my LinkedIn profile though because I’ve got fuck all proof I made them! Thanks rich people! (not that I have a LinkedIn profile *insert grinning face).
Posie Ingredients: Astrantia major “Hadspen Blood”, Alchemilla mollis, Anthriscus sylvestris “Ravenswing” (the dregs of them), Salvia nemrosa “Carradonna”, Cotinus coggygria (a purple one). Posies tied with plain rugged string down the stems for the hand-hold.
