Victoria’s Flowers and Gifts floral designers wow at Fleurs de Villes
Last week Fleurs de Villes an international flower show made a stop at the Leaf in Winnipeg. This show showcased top local florists in Winnipeg and beyond and Floral Designers Rachelle Aime and Barbara Ryshytylo of Victoria’s Flowers and Gifts in Selkirk were honoured to be part of the show.
“[We specialize] in floral design for all kinds of events. We do day-to-day celebrations, retirements, birthdays, anniversaries. We’ve also done many, many weddings through the years as well as celebration of life [events]. We’ve been established in Selkirk long enough that now we’re doing the second generation of those things, so, where we might have done someone’s wedding flowers years ago, now we’re doing their children’s wedding flowers. We’ve had a long history in Selkirk,” said Aime.
The business also is in the business of giftware and often has fair trade options for flowers and, when seasonally available, works with local flower farms.
This is the first time that Fleurs de Villes, which is an exhibition that includes the love of flowers, local design talent, and unique displays, has come to Winnipeg and the two local floral designers were one of the 15 displays that each represented a different nation as part of the show’s theme voyage.
Aime said that they were honoured to be one of only three groups from outside of Winnipeg to be invited to participate in the show.
Aime and Ryshytylo chose to represent Ukraine in the recent show and created a beautiful floral display on a mannequin that had many elements of Ukrainian culture incorporated.
“A couple of our goals with that were to honour Ukraine and the number of Ukrainian families that are in Manitoba. There’s quite a large Ukrainian population here. [We also wanted to] honour Ukraine in the context of world events. We really focused on wanting to make our mannequin uplift people. We wanted to make people smile, we wanted to give them hope and have them feel uplifted when they saw her,” said Aime.
Fittingly their display was of a Ukrainian dancer. It, of course, had sunflowers incorporated into the display but as many local people of Ukrainian heritage will have noticed there are also four sheaths of wheat, and the intricate patterns that are well-known as part of Ukrainian embroidery were replicated in floral form.
There were also some secret elements that Aime and Ryshytylo incorporated into their work that viewers may have missed at first glance.
“In the landscape that she’s in, we have wrapped around her spring to summer to fall to winter because the four distinct climates are something that Ukraine has in common with Canada,” said Aime.
Her headpiece is a more personal touch as it was inspired by the floral headpiece that Ryshytylo’s grandmother, who immigrated from Ukraine, wore on her wedding day. She’s also holding a myrtle wreath which is a common part of Ukrainian wedding customs.
Finally, the floral designers added the coat of arms of Ukraine. This symbol has become emblematic of Ukraine’s reclaiming of its cultural identity; so much so that even in the midst of Russia’s continued invasion of the country, the famous towering Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv had the previous communist symbol removed and the coat of arms of Ukraine installed last summer.
Aime said that it was a very fun challenge for the designers to create this piece. They had to work hard to make sure that all the fresh flowers were taken care of so that they were both beautiful and stayed in place properly throughout the event.
“Developing a system where we could keep flowers watered, that would be a person’s outfit was great fun. To come up with a design that would not only represent Ukraine, but we wanted visitors to recognize Ukraine without having to read the name of what country it is,” said Aime.
By all accounts, they succeeded in their work with positive feedback flowing.
Pat Ward, a St. Clements resident said, “We got to the one on Ukraine and having seen that it was from our area, it was such a beautiful display that they’d done.”
Aimes said that they were very honoured to be able to design something like this as they both come from families with Ukrainian heritage. She also wanted to acknowledge the hard work that the whole team at Victoria’s Flowers and Gifts put in in order to make this floral art piece a success for the entirety of the ten-day-long show. In addition, she is very thankful for her customer’s support over the years.
She also said that she would be very open to doing a project like this again and was very honoured to be able to represent the Interlake area.
Aimes said that this show has garnered more interest in Victoria’s Flower and Gifts.
“One thing we learned from the show is that visitors want to also visit on social media. We had many people asking us about our Instagram account and asking us to produce content there so that when you can’t be around flowers in person, at least you could see them online. And so, I think that’s part of the next bridge for us is to be able to share what we do and what we love with people, both in person in town here and then online,” said Aimes.
To learn more about Victoria’s Flowers and Gifts check them out online at https://www.victoriasflowersselkirk.com/
