CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) - Mario Fernandez feeds on the pressure of a deadline, and he'll have a tight one in the Sylvia Cup Design Competition.
The
Miami-area floral designer is among 25 competing florists. Each must complete three separate flower arrangements in two hours, with no time to prepare in advance. Much like the chefs on the Food Network series "Iron Chef," the competitors don't know ahead of time what their materials or tasks will be.
"You might have a bridal bouquet concept in your head and you get there and you're not doing a bridal bouquet," says two-time winner Conrad Quijas of Lincoln, Neb. "You may get a sympathy piece, you may get a corsage. It varies as to what the judges give you."
The Sept. 18 competition takes place with live commentary before an audience at the Society of American Florists' annual convention in Palm Beach.
"It's like a really busy day in the shop with a really fussy customer," says Ian Prosser, who judged the Cup in 2006 and won it last year. "We're looking for high standards of finish and design."
Fernandez says the pressure of competition isn't so different from the need-it-now, need-it-perfect demands he fills for corporate events, weddings and funerals in South Florida.
His approach is toward streamlined design.
"It has to look good on camera. A big, showy thing, in a picture, it looks like frayed hair. It has to be tighter," he says.
Prosser and the 2007 competitors all had callas, roses, orchids and metallic decorative wires to create three bridal arrangements with the theme "California Dreamin' in the Sixties."
Prosser's centerpiece balanced tight groups of yellow lilies and orange roses below slim green callas. Hot pink roses and purple miniature carnations cascaded from his bridal bouquet. His hairpiece featured asterisk-shaped purple orchids accentuated by wispy loops of apple-green wire.
Along with creativity and color selection, the judges look at how the designers secure their arrangements with glue, foam and binding wire.
Any customer would expect those details to be invisible, says Prosser, a
Tampa florist. Otherwise, exposed wires in a bouquet snag a wedding dress, strands of glue become a sticky spider's web, and an arrangement that comes loose from its foam base falls apart in the delivery van.
The 40th annual Sylvia Cup is billed as the country's longest-running, live floral design competition, and
offers a $2,500 prize.
"Anyone can be a 'floral designer,' even at the supermarket," says coordinator Deborah De La Flor, a Cooper City florist. "This sets us apart. We're artists, not just arrangers."
Fernandez, though, hopes to see design elements from the Cup bloom elsewhere. He says his goal is to create something that can be reproduced, such as the double yellow-and-green crescents in a sympathy tribute that earned him an honorable mention in 2006.
"It's easy to be copied. That's the objective," he says. "That's the best compliment."
