Creative outlet during self-isolation

CEBU, Philippines — The prevailing stay-at-home measures in effect everywhere is certainly restraining, especially where everyone’s productivity is concerned. Not many people are used to working in isolation. Even the creative lot that’s known to love time being alone can find it quite mentally stifling to have no one close by to sound off ideas to.

But creative professionals, by their very title, shall not be held back. They can, instead, capitalize on their ‘isolation’ to send their minds off onto flight. And that’s just what one of the world’s biggest names in fashion design does.

“I always find that when you have constrictions, you are creative,” says designer Jeremy Scott, who’s holed up in his home in Los Angeles. “Give me a problem, and I will solve it.” He has been self-isolating amid the coronavirus pandemic.

While Scott continues working on Moschino and his eponymous brand, he’s also been trying to find a positive outlet for his pent-up creativity. He’s found one that also solves the growing overabundance of the many verdant gardens around his home. As a result of lots of time and few creative resources, Scott has started a new hobby – floral arranging, of which he’s quite the master.

Talking to SteffYotka, at www.vogue.com, Scott relates: “I had a bouquet that had been sent to me… when [the pandemic] first started. I was able to take some of those flowers that had not died and wilted, and move them into another vase.” Finding the remnants of that bouquet a little lacking, he turned his eye to his surroundings. “I was walking on Mulholland [Drive] and up in the hills here, and there were a lot of dog tail weeds. As I grew up on a farm, these were very nostalgic to me – and they were so big and fluffy – so I thought I would grab some of the dog tails and add them in for a little spice.”

That’s an example of creativity at work. “But I needed some more pieces,” Scott is quick to add.  Fortunately, his house is surrounded by palms and the philodendrons, and so Scott didn’t have to look very far for the flora to top off his arrangements. But his imagination doesn’t stop there.

“Then, it just dawned on me, why don’t I paint them?” Scott called up his artist friend to try to arrange a food-for-paint trade. His friend gave Scott the paints he needed by leaving an assortment of acrylics at the gate of her home. Social distancing, remember?

Scott hadn’t painted since his days as an art student. “And even then I wasn’t a painting major, so it’s all very new to me,” Scott said. But in no time, everything “all started to come to life.”

The results of his floral arranging are housed in color vases around his home, for now. It’s not a far-fetched possibility, though, that clients will soon be calling in for some decor out of Scott’s newly discovered talent. It can either be a fertile fallback (in case the fashion industry really goes into a slump) or a viable alternative career direction.

A much closer possibility, though, is that his newfound pastime will have “a little floral influence” in Scott’s fashion collections. “Whether it’s a print that has palm leaves or a print I paint myself, somehow, something will come differently,” he predicts. Jeremy Scott is proof that creative energy can hardly be contained… and it knows no bounds.