Nikki Tibbles: Flower child
For Nikki Tibbles, recession isn’t an issue. People are still buying flowers in style, in fact so much so that she is opening a new flagship store in Pimlico, plus a new concession in Liberty. Nikki is the woman behind Wild at Heart, the florist that made flowers fashionable and became an integral part of Notting Hill’s new-found glamour in the 1990s. Its home in Westbourne Grove’s Turquoise Island became a local landmark, the genius of combining a public loo with a flower stall making it a curiosity as well as a fabulous place for flora.
But Nikki hasn’t always been a florist, and it wasn’t a love of flowers specifically that inspired her, but a more general interest in colour and texture. She was working in advertising as an account director when she was roped in to help organise a friend’s wedding and found herself enjoying the process much more than expected.
“I had always wanted to work in a creative environment but I didn’t go to art school and I can’t write and I can’t paint but I love colour and texture – I love things but I can’t do anything with them,” says Nikki. We are drinking tea in her impressive Notting Hill house, a colourful and stylish space that’s full of vases but empty of flowers (“I never have them at home, it’s more work”) where she lives with two enormous dogs. “I love luxury, volume and abundance, and hate meanness on any level,” she says, and just as a Wild at Heart arrangement will impress with its sheer scale, Nikki’s house is full of big, colourful things: big cushions, huge furniture, outsize vases, enormous pictures. And there are the dogs, with their supersize presence. Even Nikki is in giant platform heels. There’s no meanness in any of these dimensions.
Having decided on flowers as the medium for her, Nikki ditched her day job and enrolled on a floristry course, but was put off by everyone else being 16 and classes focusing on learning to tie “those bows”. When she found herself making a waterlily out of a pair of white tights, she abandoned the course, gave up her £2.50 an hour job bunching roses at a Battersea florist and decided to go it alone. “I just learnt. I thought I’d work in film or TV doing flowers, so I contacted everyone I knew in advertising. Soon I was doing flowers for Ogilvy and Mather, and Saatchi’s, and that sort of grew. I just bought beautiful flowers that I loved and wrapped them in brown paper with raffia. I didn’t like things to be too messy, so I did bunches that were all one type of flower with colour tones.” It was her distinctive style that made the whole thing such an instant success. “It sounds like a cliché but nature is such an inspiration – you look at hedgerows and see so many different colours and textures that look gorgeous together. And I look at clothes and think, so that’s the direction fashion’s moving in – let’s take flowers in that direction. If there’s chiffon or layering I’ll try beautiful blousy pink roses.”
Nikki was living in Notting Hill and renting a studio in Southwark in 1993 when a note came through her door inviting tenders for a new flower shop in Piers Gough’s Turquoise Island, then newly built in Westbourne Grove. “So I wrapped some flowers beautifully and delivered them to the address they gave, which was the council’s waste department. Then I got a call inviting me to an interview – and they gave me the keys.” Nikki instantly loved the shop, though it was hard work. “I’d go to the market at 4am then open the shop at 8am – we were open until 8pm six days a week, and 10am to 4pm on Sundays.” Now she focuses on weddings and contract work, and works on some of the most extravagant events in the world. Recent highlights have been a royal wedding in Qatar (“extraordinarily fabulous”), a Holland Park couple’s wedding in Santorini and glamorous events everywhere from the south of France to the Hamptons.
After the Island came a further shop in Ledbury Road, which switched its focus to flower-related interiors with a stylish range of vases, floral textiles, scented candles, flower books and other variations on the theme. But the area suffered after the introduction of the congestion charge and the loss of Fresh and Wild, so the shop closed early in 2008 to make way for an entirely new type of store, away from Wild at Heart’s W11 roots. “I was looking for another area with a great neighbourhood feel and found that Grosvenor Estates, the landlord for Pimlico Road, really wanted to change the area but not in the way Westbourne Grove has changed. They wanted a good mix.” Accessible for shoppers from Chelsea and Mayfair, the newPimlico Road store takes over an entire building and will bring together the flowers, the interiors pieces and Wild at Heart’s offices, all for a rent that’s “amazing – so much cheaper than Notting Hill,” raves Nikki. Though she does feel sad about what’s happened to Westbourne Grove. “I feel sad that people have to pay £8 to come here. When Fresh and Wild left, the street had its heart ripped out; people used to come from everywhere and get a cappuccino at Tom’s and buy a bunch of flowers. And it’s tragically quiet, since the congestion charge also means that locals can drive into the West End and don’t need to shop locally.”
Wild at Heart opened in Liberty’s last month, with a redesign for the whole brand. Now the look is grey, black and silver, with an injection of Liberty purple. The Pimlico store opens in October and will look amazing, promises Nikki. But she’s not forsaking W11. “I love it here. I shop at The Cross, eat at Rosa’s, drink at The Cow and buy food at Tom’s and Tavola, Lidgates and the Mechanicou Brothers. And now awful Budgens has been replaced by fabulous Waitrose, which is great. I love the market and love walking to the park with the dogs. I’d never want to live anywhere else in London.” So if you see someone in a floral frock with platform heels and two big dogs, that’ll be Nikki.
www.wildatheart.com