Are faux flowers naff?
It's complicated. Here are some pointers
Every now and then someone tries to make fake flowers happen, meaning ‘become acceptable to people who would have died of horror at the thought of them ten years ago’. It’s sort of working: as fake flowers become more and more refined and realistic, an increasing number of us have become faux-curious, suspended somewhere between ‘wow, those do actually look amazing’ and ‘mm, fake flowers though, horrible idea’.
Last Saturday the Financial Times put forward a persuasive case in favour, illustrated with photographs of beautiful (professionally arranged, not irrelevant) displays. The article noted that Chanel and Dior, among others, use Flora Magnifica in Paris, who also sell silk flowers to normal people from their shop in the rue des Tournelles (they ship worldwide, as do all places I’ve linked to in the captions).
The article mentioned the use of faux flowers at Kensington Palace and Covent Garden, etc. The cumulative effect of all this name-dropping, plus the fact the piece appeared in the rarefied FT, was that fake flowers were now chic, sophisticated and not even a tiny bit… iffy.