Business is Blooming
It’s an early start to the day and Los Angeles is bathed in soft sunlight. Like most mornings, scores of commuters are leaving their houses all over the city, hoping to beat the traffic on their way to work. Punika, known as Puni, is one of them. She picks me up at 6.30am in her white Fiat 500 and we make our way downtown through the already congested freeway. Once we’ve parked under a bright blue sky on the topmost floor of a parking lot, Puni pulls out her access badge to enter the building and heads straight for the coffee machine. Though she checks her phone for client briefs and project deadlines while waiting for her coffee to be ready, this is no ordinary downtown office day.
Hidden between the historic art deco buildings and the glass highrises that make up the DTLA skyline, you can find several warehouses that are home to the Los Angeles Flower District. Puni is a floral designer and makes the pilgrimage across town to the bustling flower markets here multiple times a week. Coffee cup in hand, she smoothly navigates a labyrinth of vibrant colors and delicate petals bursting against concrete floors and harsh LED lights. Like a bee gathering pollen, she hops from one friendly flower vendor to the next, depending on what she’s looking for that day. I marvel at the ease with which she makes conversation with them, practicing her Spanish with some, catching up in her native Thai with others.
“Coffee cup in hand, she smoothly navigates a labyrinth of vibrant colors and delicate petals bursting against concrete floors and harsh LED lights. ”
Puni grew up on the island of Phuket in Thailand and moved to the U.S. in 2010. A born creative, she recalls a lifelong urge to make beautiful things and bring people joy, whether through painting, cooking or writing. In 2022, she began to explore floral design, never once imagining that what began with offering Mother’s Day flower arrangements out of her West Hollywood apartment would one day transform into Puni Petals, a floral studio that now caters to an impressive portfolio of clients, including iconic brands like Glossier and Louboutin. Despite her artistic talent and canny knack for social media growing her business beyond all expectation, she remains humble and grateful for her supportive community of floral designers, some of whom we even bump into at the flower market.
It’s a very active morning for Puni at the Flower District, the largest in the country. She jokes that she doesn’t need a gym membership—market days are how she reaches her step count. I watch, impressed, as she hauls enormous bunches of flowers from one end of the building to the other. She piles her supply on a rack of shelves in a corner of the market, then returns to her mission. By the time we leave, the shelves are filled with orchids, peonies, hydrangeas, dahlias and anthuriums, all of which will soon become an artist’s palette of fuschia and coral, creamy white and lime green.
Somehow, everything fits in the tiny Fiat—which, according to Puni, has been known to transport much bigger loads—and we head back to West Hollywood to tackle the second part of the job. Back at the apartment, each flower must be individually trimmed, cleaned up and sorted in large buckets. It’s a tedious task, and Puni reveals she has to buy shears in packs of ten because she goes through them like ballpoint pens. I try my hand at it, but in the time it takes me to finish a single bunch of peonies, Puni has already turned the living room into her very own flower shop that she’ll pick from when she starts composing.
Watching her work, it becomes clear to me that Puni’s delicate labor is pure art. It is mesmerizing to witness how she painstakingly selects each flower not just for its color but also for its shape, texture, and height, in order to create a style that is uniquely hers. When she’s done—and when she’s not in a hurry—she takes photos of her arrangements, playing with light and contrast before sharing her characteristically chiaroscuro images online. It comes as no surprise that she and other floral artists have truly been able to—if you’ll pardon the pun—blossom on Instagram, largely due to the visual nature of their craft. Yet Puni’s floral designs are less comparable to paintings than they are to ephemeral ice sculptures, destined to shine IRL before wilting, which, though inevitable, frequently comes as a shock to many of her enchanted clients.
Puni has certainly landed in the right place to pursue her craft. Not only does the Golden State grow the most flowers in the country, it employs the most floral designers, a statistic that is brought to life by local businesses across California. In countless shops, cafes, and restaurants, showstopping florals, despite their transient nature, play as crucial a part in designing an experience as music, service, or food. For me, this is a comforting reminder that despite the omnipresence of digital technology in this day and age, our appreciation for tangible, organic beauty is safeguarded by talented artists like Puni.
Photos & text - Pauline Chatelan @paulinechatelan
Featuring - Puni @puni.petals
