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How Taylor Tomasi Hill Turned Fashion Burnout Into New York’s Most Coveted Floral Empire
The street style icon traded her Creative Director title for Chelsea’s flower market—and built a business that had Dior, Tory Burch, and every fashion insider on speed dial
The Power Play That Started With a Thank-You Note
In October 2013, Taylor Tomasi Hill walked away from her dream job as Creative Director of Moda Operandi—the luxury fashion e-commerce darling where she’d spent two years signing over 200 brands and reshaping how women shopped runway. The industry was stunned. She was, by all accounts, burned out.
What happened next became one of fashion’s most unexpected success stories.
While the industry speculated about her next move, Tomasi Hill did something radical: nothing. Well, almost nothing. She strolled through Chelsea’s flower market each morning, her flame-red hair unmistakable among the wholesale vendors. She arranged miniature bouquets on her kitchen counter. And when she took meetings with the Diane von Furstenbergs and Tory Burches of the world, she hand-delivered these tiny arrangements as thank-you gifts.
“People started asking me for the name of my florist,” she told interviewers later, with the kind of casual elegance that had made street style photographers follow her around fashion week for years. “I realized, oh—it’s me.”
By June 2014, TTH Blooms launched on Instagram. Within two years, the account had 44,000 followers. The arrangements commanded $250 each. And the client list read like a Fashion Week front row: Dior, Zac Posen, Goop, Piperlime. The fashion world’s favorite florist had arrived.
The Anatomy of an It-Girl Business
Here’s what Taylor Tomasi Hill understood that most aspiring entrepreneurs don’t: credibility is currency, and she’d spent a decade accumulating it.
Before TTH Blooms, she was the Taylor Tomasi Hill—Pratt Institute graduate turned W Magazine intern turned accessories director at Teen Vogue and Marie Claire. Her Instagram following topped 121,000, not because she tried to be an influencer (the term barely existed then), but because photographers couldn’t resist her ability to mix prints, clash patterns, and make it look like the only possible choice. She was street style before street style became an industry.
When she left Moda Operandi, she didn’t just leave a job—she leveraged a reputation. Every fashion editor, brand executive, and designer in New York knew her name. More importantly, they trusted her taste.
So when those miniature arrangements started showing up at their offices, wrapped in craft paper and tied with baker’s twine, they didn’t just see flowers. They saw Taylor.
The Product: Fashion Week for Your Coffee Table
Traditional florists work in predictable palettes and standard sizes. Taylor approached flowers the way she approached getting dressed: with an art school eye for composition, a fashion editor’s instinct for the unexpected, and zero interest in convention.
Her signature? Miniature arrangements only. “One size only, miniature, packed full of beauties,” she declared. Ranunculus and peonies (when she could source them) arranged in mason jars, each bouquet a tiny rebellion against the dozen-rose status quo.
The look was instantly recognizable—not because it followed any formula, but because it bore her unmistakable aesthetic fingerprint. The same styling skills that let her pair a Céline coat with vintage jewelry translated seamlessly to arranging flowers. She wasn’t formally trained, and she positioned this as an advantage. “You won’t get anything contrived from me,” she said. “I’m probably most talented when it comes to an untrained eye.”
For Elle.com, she created 10 runway-inspired bouquets based on collections from Céline, Chanel, and Thom Browne. It was peak TTH Blooms: flowers as fashion, fashion as flowers, and Taylor as the only person who could convincingly argue they were the same thing.
The Business Model: Events, Not Everything
While most florists hustle for wedding after bridal shower after Valentine’s Day arrangement, Taylor built TTH Blooms around a different strategy: go big or go home.
Events became her bread and butter—brand activations, corporate galas, fashion week parties. She’d do a single arrangement for a close friend, sure, but the real business was transforming entire spaces for clients who understood (and could afford) her vision. At $250 per arrangement average, she could be selective.
This focus was strategic genius. Events meant:
- Higher price points justified by scale and prestige
- Direct access to multiple potential clients at once (every attendee was a prospect)
- Press coverage that doubled as marketing
- The ability to maintain TTH Blooms as a lean operation without retail complexity
She offered citywide delivery throughout New York’s boroughs but no international shipping. She’d travel for destination weddings if the project was right. Everything about the business model screamed intentionality: grow smart, not just big.
The Client List That Built Itself
When you’ve spent years as a fashion insider, you don’t cold-call clients—they call you.
After those initial thank-you arrangements reached Diane von Furstenberg and Tory Burch (whose Creative Director Honor Brodie personally passed along Taylor’s information), the referrals snowballed. Dior commissioned her. Zac Posen wanted her arrangements for events. Goop partnered with her for a Dallas pop-up.
The fashion industry operates on trust and taste—two things Taylor had in abundance. When attendees at a Dior event saw her arrangements, they didn’t need to research florists. They already knew whose work they were admiring. They already had her number.
Meanwhile, the press ate it up. Elle ran a two-page spread. Vogue.com featured her work. Net-A-Porter profiled her. The Hollywood Reporter, Racked, and every major fashion publication wanted the story: “Street Style Star Becomes Fashion’s Favorite Florist.”
The meta-narrative was irresistible—part of a broader trend of fashion insiders escaping to creative pursuits, seeking authenticity in an increasingly corporate industry. Taylor became the poster child for that movement, and every article was free advertising.
The Instagram Strategy That Changed Floristry
TTH Blooms launched on Instagram in June 2014, just as the platform was cementing itself as fashion’s favorite communication tool. The timing was impeccable.
For a florist, Instagram is rocket fuel—visual, immediate, shareable. For Taylor’s floral business, it was something else entirely: a direct line from her existing 121,000 followers to her new venture. She didn’t have to build an audience; she already had one.
Every arrangement photographed in her living room (that Dynasty slate wallpaper from Eskayel became an inadvertent brand signature) was content. Every event was a photo opportunity. The TTH Blooms account hit 44,000 followers—astronomical for a boutique florist.
But the real genius was how Instagram flattened the distance between Taylor and her clients. DMs became the inquiry channel. The feed became the portfolio. Fashion’s famously busy executives could commission arrangements between shows without ever picking up the phone.
The Fashion Florist Movement She Sparked
TTH Blooms didn’t just succeed—it created a category.
Suddenly, fashion insiders were eyeing the floral industry as a viable creative outlet. Adam Wilkie, Tom Ford’s former PR director, launched Flowerbx. Kilee Hughes from Net-a-Porter started Mariama. Daniel Tyson from BPCM debuted La Fleur Garçon. The pattern was clear: fashion credentials plus floristry equals instant credibility and press.
Taylor had proven the model. She’d shown that:
- Fashion styling skills translate to floral arrangement
- Personal brand can be monetized beyond traditional roles
- Instagram-first marketing works for creative services
- Premium pricing is justified by taste and access
- The industry would embrace—and pay for—this hybrid approach
By 2016, “fashion florist” was a recognized archetype, and every article about the trend mentioned Taylor first.
Why the Conversion Rate Was Never the Point
You won’t find published data on TTH Blooms’ conversion rates, and that’s because traditional metrics miss what made the business successful.
This wasn’t about funnel optimization or conversion rate testing. It was about Taylor selling access to her taste, her connections, her credibility. When someone contacted TTH Blooms, they weren’t comparison shopping against 1-800-Flowers. They wanted Taylor’s arrangements, created by Taylor, for their event.
The “conversion rate” was beside the point because:
- The audience was pre-qualified (fashion industry contacts with budget)
- Trust was pre-established (decade of relationship-building)
- The product was unique (no direct competitors)
- Social proof was built-in (high-profile clients and press coverage)
Every Instagram follower who inquired was already sold. Every referral from Tory Burch’s team came pre-approved. The question wasn’t “will they buy?” but “when can you deliver?”
The Real Lesson: Personal Brand as Business Moat
By 2016, Taylor accepted a position at Forty Five Ten in Dallas, effectively ending TTH Blooms’ run. It lasted just over two years—a blink in fashion time, an eternity in impact.
The business couldn’t scale beyond her personal capacity without losing its essential character. There was no “TTH Blooms without Taylor.” And that was both its limitation and its genius.
Because here’s what TTH Blooms actually proved: If you have credibility, connections, and a cultivated point of view, you can create a business in an adjacent creative field and dominate it immediately. Not by competing with established players on their terms, but by redefining the category entirely.
Taylor didn’t become a successful florist who happened to know fashion. She became a fashion authority who happened to arrange flowers. That distinction made all the difference.
The flowers were never really the point. The flowers were the medium through which she expressed taste, access, and authority—the same qualities that made her a street style star, a successful editor, and eventually, for a brief, perfect moment, New York’s most coveted florist.
In fashion terms, she didn’t follow the trend. She was the trend. And everyone else is still catching up.
Taylor Tomasi Hill’s influence on both fashion and floristry continues today. The lesson remains: Build the brand first, and the business follows—especially when you have 121,000 people already paying attention.
