Kris Knight grew up in the countryside. That contact with nature and the memories he has of the pastries from his mother’s bakery still imbue the work he creates for Gucci today. In fact, the pastel colors that can be seen on the legendary scarf are none other, in his own words, than the reminiscence of his hours spent trudging in the fields, or in the family bakery. “For my reinterpretation of Flora, I wanted to create a painting that would pay homage to the delicateness of the original by Accornero, by using its compositional symmetry, but to create my own Flora, strong, feminine, magic, and silently dangerous. I make reference to pagan and ancient Rome, gathering the plants that women in those times used to harness their powers.” And that’s how Kris Knight took the Gucci motif in a whole new direction: using symbolic but nocturnal flowers, each of them containing a story. That of ancient Rome where, in the night, at dawn or at dusk, the flowers reach up high, oh so high, to reach greatness. It’s a subversive reading of the iconic bouquet. Engraved on fabric are the most known plants and flowers by the name of Belladonna and Datura – used by the beauties of ancient Rome to provoke desire and seduction.
For these flowers contain a toxic nectar, often used by men of the era. But never mind, for they are of an unheard-of beauty. Next to them, a number of flowers with the power of healing sprout up on this foulard, like poppies, henbane, and mandrake… flowers that surreptitiously evoke the dark and fanciful, if not hallucinogenic, evenings of the ancient Romans, Greeks, and Celts. At the same time, plants that symbolize protection, such as clovers, dandelion, and nightshade grow in turn with their own mysticism to match. When asked why, Kris Knight explains that he “went beyond the flower box (…) Often, my paintings brush on dichotomies, so I wanted to create a Flora design mixing elements of beauty, strength, and desire, but that also implied darkness and enchantment.” Success.
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