FLORA MAE is a one woman business, launched in 2020 from her home in Cambridge, now based in London. Her work as an independent designer took off after her fundraising project in which Flora raised over $1000 for bail funds amid BLM protests in the US that summer, through selling her first designs, the 'Festin Corsets'. 

 

FLORA MAE's designs and creative process are derived from historical fashion and its methods. With a BA degree in History of Art, and a personal collection of authentic antique garments dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, FLORA MAE patterns are developed from and inspired by original historical sources. FLORA MAE fuses fashion design and fashion history, creating not only wearable garments, but also reminders of historical fashions, methods and silhouettes to be reinterpreted for contemporary existence.

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Modular and sustainable fashion are key elements of the FLORA MAE ethos. Each garment is created with repurposed fabrics. Reducing production waste is undoubtedly a keystone of sustainability, but FLORA MAE pushes sustainability further, looking to modular fashion design. Corsets wearable inside and outside, or flipped one way as an underbust and the other as a belt. Adapting antique trouser patterns to add ties and fastenings that they may flip and become sleeves to a blouse. Unwrapping a circle skirt and tying it on the shoulders as a cape silhouette. FLORA MAE stands for the capsule wardrobe in which one, two or three garments may be worn in endless combinations, the FLORA MAE ensemble.

 

Learn more through the FLORA MAE ARCHIVE.