We were lucky to catch up with Laurel St. Romain recently and have shared our conversation below.

Laurel , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I am finally earning a full time living from my creative work, an accomplishment I still find hard to believe. When I started Dead Flowers in May of 2018, I knew I was taking a huge risk. I had no experience whatsoever in floral design, but I did have experience in fashion and the arts. I understood the principles of design, and decided to rely on instinct rather than education to lead the way. I wanted my work to present in an unruly, self directed way which has always given me room to grow and adapt. A couple of months after starting Dead Flowers I found out I was pregnant and was left wondering how I was going to make all of this work but that’s the funny thing about life – somehow you just always make it work – and it was, albeit difficult at times. Exactly a year after my daughter was born Covid came and took the event industry with it along with the small business I was growing. I still don’t quite know how we as a family survived that first year, but we did somehow, and I never gave up on Dead Flowers. Today, my business is strong and growing, and I have learned so many lessons along the way, the most important being to trust. I needed to learn to trust not only myself and my decisions, but to trust and value the freelancers that keep my business up and running. I have always had the urgency to complete and accomplish everything on my own, and have a hard time asking for help. When growing a business, and accumulating accounts and clients, this idea of “do it myself” was just not possible, and I feel so fortunate that I have found a handful of reliable, talented designers to prop me up and own parts of this business. I wish I had put that into place sooner, but there’s no time like the present to make changes! When looking back, the early parts of starting a business now seem daunting, like I find myself wondering how I had the energy to do all the things from making a website to filing legal documents and all the in between. It was that do it myself mentality that got me started, but its certainly not achievable in the long term, and I am grateful for all the love and support of my friends, family and my team.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I got into the floral industry quite by accident. I have always worked in fashion from my first job working at a vintage store in Austin, TX to my internship for Betsey Johnson and working for an incredible stylist with many positions in between…I have done it all – modeling, designing, product development, merchandising, planning, styling…but the more I worked in the industry and the farther up the invisible ladder I climbed the farther I felt from the root of myself, from the creativity inside, almost to the point that I was sure I had lost my creativity all together. this fear became crippling, and is what kept me in the fashion industry so long. I was completely unsure if I could ever be good at anything else. Were my skills transferrable? They seemed so specific. It turns out they were indeed transferrable, and that the principles of design, things like color, texture, proportion, were all I needed to regain the confidence to go out on my own. When I started Dead Flowers I remember making a website, filing legal paperwork, starting an instagram, fooling around with some flowers I got at the market and not having any idea what this would shape out to be. I just remember trusting myself, spreading the word to friends and hoping for the best. A couple of weeks later my long time friend and collaborator Kim Swift said she had a lead on a project for me. She had a friend who worked for Spotify and they needed someone to design a sort of “pop up garden” in the middle of an empty lot in Greenpoint for a secret performance by Florence and the Machine. In true “fake it til you. make it” fashion I said absolutely! I don’t think I have ever been more petrified in my life – I had no idea what I was doing, how to budget properly, who to hire, I didnt even know what a certificate of insurance was. I hired all my friends – a mistake i will never make again – and lost a lot of money on that job, however I gained so many valuable lessons that have put me where I am today. And the best part is the event turned out beautifully, actually, it was magical. Florence herself thanked me and my team and Spotify is still a client of mine to this day. And this turning point of a job pointed me in the direction I wanted to go – botanical set design. That is the area Dead Flowers excels in. Building moments and worlds that exist only for a moment.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I believe that most creative people are also deeply emotional, which can be both our greatest trait and our greatest downfall. I was always told that I felt things deeply – as a creative and as an Aries if you’re into astrology. When my daughter was born, she spent three months in the NICU, and that emotional experience was debilitating, especially to my business. I lived with a tremendous amount of guilt that even now still takes up some small residence in my body. I remember feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt – guilt that my body didn’t comply and bring her here safely, guilt that my business I worked so hard at was now on the farthest back burner, guilt that I was being a terrible partner in my relationship, and guilt that I somehow wasn’t super human enough to manage it all without sadness, anxiety and crushing depression. Even when she came home things didn’t get better. I felt ill prepared to take care of her, she was so fragile. I didn’t feel ready to work, or to be out in the world for that matter. I struggled with a lot of anxiety, particularly around the idea of motherhood. I look back on that time with so much compassion for myself. Small business owners don’t get maternity leave (generally). We don’t have loads of money saved up for long term infant hospitalizations, and we certainly don’t have the work force to move things along when we cannot move them ourselves. I feel for that version of myself, and am really proud of her for not giving up, for listening to her body and for taking things one day at a time. Eventually, things calmed down and I got back to being myself. Today, I feel so strong not because of what happened, but because I am here today with a beautiful. little girl who I see so much strength and determination in. I see the past, present and future inside of her, and I am learning from her resilience every single day.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I feel that there is a huge misconception that people who do creative work, or any work in general that is not a 9-5 full time traditional job, are living a charmed life, with loads of free time and little responsibility. As a creative business owner, I have very few days off and even less down time when you add mother to that equation. On days that I am not installing an event, working on set, or preparing for jobs I am doing back end billing, budgeting, payroll, invoicing, coding expenses, making design documents, researching, doing returns, and the list goes on. There’s also the dreaded aspect of social media to attend to, something I am very bad at. We don’t always have the money to hire people to fill these roles, so we take them on ourselves. What we portray to the world in the form of our art and craft is not all we are capable of, and very often its only a small part of what happens behind the scenes. Creatives are some of the hardest working people I know!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.deadflowersnyc.com
• Instagram: @deadflowersnyc