Florals, bedecking celebrities on the red carpet, and a love of country. Tricia Paoluccio talks Dolly Parton, Anna Wintour, and a world in bloom

Beloved botanicals

I grew up on an almond farm in Modesto, California and have been pressing flowers since childhood – something I took for granted until I had a gallery show in New York City in 2021. I had botanical collages blown up to scale around the space, and because we’d just come out of lockdown, being surrounded by nature in that way really evoked emotion in people. Humankind naturally gravitates towards plants and flowers – they make us happy. That’s when I really started realising the impact of this art form. 

Flower pressing

Groundbreaking technology 

The technology I use to create my homeware really didn’t exist a decade ago – where a live work of art could be photographed then reproduced and printed onto paper or porcelain and look completely real. The shadow, the light, the three-dimensionality. Nobody had made wallpaper based on real pressed flowers, so I wanted to figure that process out. I started working with a graphic designer, and we would spend hours breaking apart my very dense compositions and turning them into patterns. I now have around 50.

Anna Wintour

World in bloom

I have a beautiful little art studio on my parents’ farm in California, and flowers strewn all over my London apartment. My goal in life is to eventually – whatever continent I’m on – reflect something from that landscape. I’m heading to Australia this year, and I’m going to pick and press a new body of work using their wildflowers, because they’re so unique. I’m inspired by nature wherever I am. 

The wallpaper collection

En vogue

Anna Wintour recently bought two of my art pieces, so I’m very excited about that. She wore my collaboration with Oscar de la Renta to the Met Gala in 2021. I provided all of the flowers and the artwork, then they finalised the fabric into these beautiful dresses that became quite famous during that time. Using pressed flower imagery in high design works could have been hokey or cheesy-looking, but it really worked. 

As Dolly Parton

Dear Dolly

My love affair with Dolly Parton began when I was a little girl. I heard her records on the radio and I memorised every vibrato in her voice. I would sing her songs and envision moving to New York and becoming an actress. I always had this ability to channel Dolly, and I first played her at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville – the mother church of country music. I then wrote the show, Here You Come Again with my husband [director, Gabriel Barre]. Dolly loved the material and gave us worldwide grand rights to all of the music, and we’ve now toured the world. 

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