We recently had the opportunity take a workshop with our talented clients at Flower Duet. We found out a little bit about how they got started and about their design inspirations.
Flower Duet is custom wedding and event floral design studio in Los Angeles owned by sisters Kit Wertz & Casey Schwartz.
Sisters Casey Schwartz (left) and Kit Wertz (right), owners of Flower Duet – a custom Event Floral Design Studio in the South Bay of Los Angeles, California.Tell us about Flower Duet and how you got started.
We started Flower Duet as a part-time weekend business after Casey had retired from designing flowers on luxury cruise ships around the world and Kit had immersed herself in floral design courses for a few years. We love creating custom wedding flowers for all types of brides and grooms, directing corporate team-building reward events for companies like Brighton and Ernst & Young and teaching flower arranging to budding floral designers and the dedicated floral enthusiast.
Flower Duet has been our full-time passion for the last decade and it shows as we are preferred floral vendors for Terranea Resort, Trump National Golf Club, Norris Center Pavilion, Los Verdes Golf Course, Verandas, La Venta Inn and The South Coast Botanic Garden.
Read more about Kit and Casey here.
Tell us a little bit about your process working together as sisters and how you collaborate and inspire each others visual/floral style.
We have always gotten along very well. We have worked together in the past, Kit as a lifeguard at the club where we were members, and I was the Manager. She often took over my jobs as I grew out of them and so it is nice working the business together. We travel well together and have throughout Europe, Scandinavia and the Caribbean… admiring flowers, and gardens along the way.
Is there a main area of floral design that Flower Duet focuses on?
We do it all – We have a nice balance of teaching, weddings and events.
Pretty wedding florals by Flower Duet at the Catalina View Gardens.When did you start offering floral workshops?
EARLY. I had some flower experience on the ships, Kit got married here in Los Angeles and when I got off the ships and we did her flowers… all her friends wanted to know who did them. After they found out it was the two of us they wanted to learn. We would teach and then they would hire us to handle their weddings… it continued to build with that same balance for the last 18 years.
Pictures from the Prolific Proteas workshop held at the Flower Duet South Bay Studio with Kit WertzTell us about an all-time favorite event, client or workshop you would like to highlight.
We grew up with our Grandparents and Parents taking us to The Huntington Botanical Garden in San Marino, CA. A World Renowned destination for garden lovers. When we got the call that they wanted to hire us to handle all their floral design class 10 years ago we knew we had arrived!! We have taught there for 10 years and our classes still sell out. It is wonderful to pull in there on a Saturday Morning and tell the guard we are teaching today and the guard waves us through. A pure delightful dream.
What are some of your favorite tools, props or flowers to work with?
ALL. We love the familiar, and we love a challenge. We made a Topiary lamb for the California Lamb Board last summer for a Food event in Los Angeles. We used all locally grown flowers and some other interesting items. That was cool and we totally worked together to make it happen! Click here for more about that fun day!
Our lamb structure was custom made starting with a wire topiary frame which we stuffed with moss and then covered the face and legs in dried plums. For the flowers to stay fresh for 4 days and nights, we used a floral garland and lots of fresh California Grown flowers and greenery like Protea, Ruscus, Variegated Pittosporum and Gomphrena Globosa.Any favorites trends for 2017?
GREENERY – The Pantone color of the year says it all. We have always both loved adding tons of greenery to our designs. So fun that everyone else has finally joined the fun and flair!
What’s next for Flower Duet?
More Teaching, More Summits and Presentations to feature our way and style of teaching. It is a life skill and everyone loves to know how to design!!!!!! More creative designs to be more eco-friendly. We have ideas all the time. With 4 kids between us under the age of 12 we are constantly inspired by their imagination and love finding the time to bring them to life, to the industry and to the world.
