My Lady Garden x Astrid & Miyu

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Kai, the founder and creative director of My Lady Garden in celebration of the launch of our highly anticipated 'Gaea Collection'.

This collection blends itself effortlessly into the My Lady Garden world by taking inspiration from Gaea, the greek goddess herself and Mother Nature.

Kai graciously let team A&M invade her dreamy little studio in East London to capture some gorgeous imagery while giving us a few words of wisdom about what she has learned running her very own business and how, during a pandemic, My Lady Garden has blossomed into what it is today.

It has truly been a year like no other, has the recent pandemic changed things for My Lady Garden?

"It has changed pretty much everything about My Lady Garden. I got my studio here in February and it wasn’t a shop, just a place where I made everything for weddings and events, then we went into lockdown and that was all wiped out.

So then I started doing deliveries on Mother’s day and it just took off from there.

We are now open as a shop 6 days a week and do deliveries 3 days a week, it’s just kind of been a lockdown baby which is very fun!"

How did you start your career in floristry?

"Oh well I moved to London when I was 18 and worked as a nanny, in bars/stores, I did everything. Then lived in Portugal for a bit and worked in a surf bar just you know, living my best life! When I moved back here I started to think ok should really knuckle down now, so I drew a mind map of all the things I liked. For sure, I knew I wanted to do something creative so then I did a diploma in Floral Design. It was 9 months of super traditional methods, so not really my style at all but yeah, I just interned and freelanced as much as I could during the course and then moved to New York where I freelanced full time for 2 years."

As a female founded business, do you have advice for someone starting out on the same journey?

"Well, work your butt off and don’t stop! My real advice would be to try and surround yourself by people that you look up to in terms of business, and just like on pick their brains, because you will never stop learning."

So we partnered for this exciting collaboration in order to celebrate the launch of our Gaea Collection, do you have a favourite piece?

"100% the Rope Dome Hoops! Love them!"

In terms of jewellery, how would you describe your style? What are your go-to pieces everyday?

"Mix and matchy, I often wear the same core pieces every day but then just switch some around, probably my earrings mostly and I’ll mix silver & gold together too. My go to pieces are rings, stacks of them. I usually have like 5 rings on everyday."

Do you like dainty pieces or really chunky stand out ones?

"I like a bit of both. A dainty necklace is nice when there’s nothing else but I’ll generally go for chunkier earrings. Also depends on the occasion really, at work when I’m dressed a bit plainer a chunky earring is nice but then if I’m in something more patterned I’ll go for dainty pieces. "

And finally, your bouquets are always dreamy so what are your top picks for an A/W bouquet?

"So we don’t often use foliage but for A/W I’d have some nice autumnal foliage and I’d use quite a lot of orange, burnt orange, mustard. They’re quite colourful and rich but would then always clash them with something not too traditional and wacky. It’s nice to offset the colours and we’re quite lucky that a lot of the flowers come from Holland so we can get pretty much any colour we want year round."

Shopping bag

My Lady Garden x Astrid & Miyu

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