Ten years after founding Popup Florist, Kelsie Hayes has fully settled down. After studying fashion design in LA, Kelsie early in her career worked as a creative director for a now-defunct clothing label that staged picnics and other surprise in-store happenings. These events are what inspired her to become a self-taught florist. Her specialty: coming up with arresting ways for fashion brands to get people to crawl out from behind their screens.
Based in NYC but initially peripatetic, Kelsie ran pop-ups and sold bouquets from a flower cart at a Theory shop. Soon, she was working on a bigger scale for the likes of Prada, Gucci, Hermès, Gigi Hadid, Eva Chen, and Netflix: creating sets for fashion shows, producing influencer dinners, and designing the florals for red carpets. Constantly asked for the perfect Manhattan location to hold events, Kelsie realized it was time to open her own.
A decisive sort, she knew that the second place she looked at was The One. Kelsie also happens to be visionary: the former lighting showroom on West 28th Street was nothing more than an industrial white box (conveniently a block from Popup Florist’s workroom in the Flower District). It’s now House of Three, a clubby, other-worldly gathering spot where Kelsie and crew host private events and creative workshops. Designed as intuitively as Kelsie’s florals, the space is filled with inventive, doable ideas worth trying at home. Come see.
Photography by Ori Harpaz, courtesy of Popup Florist (@popupflorist) and House of Three (@houseofthreenyc).
Kelsie had her go-to contractor, Jeremy Hogeland, build the glass-walled partition. It was a splurge, but since they didn’t make any structural changes, no permissions were required.
The ruched cotton ceiling light is the Aldwin Pendant from Soho Home.
The Ubud Coffee Table is from Arhaus; Jeremy hung the weighty glass Pollensa Chandelier hours before the opening party.
