A Guide to Maurice Harris’s Life and Career

Maurice Harris is a small business owner and floral artist. He is the founder and owner of Bloom & Plume floral studio located in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

He is a judge on Full Bloom, the HBO Max floral design competition series, and the host of his own show, Centerpiece, on the Roku streaming platform. The floral designer and his team have worked with prominent luxury apparel clients like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and sportswear brand Nike. News and culture publications like The New York Times, Architectural Digest, and W Magazine have featured Maurice’s work. Institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and at the Rockefeller Center in New York City have showcased his unique designs.

Maurice brings an offbeat design sensibility to the floral world with his signature asymmetric floral installations. He believes that a customer’s unique style is what makes an arrangement shine brightest.

Long before Maurice opened his floral shop, he trained his eye to create beautiful visual displays that look like nothing else out there. Here is a brief overview of Maurice’s creative life and career in visual merchandising and floral design:

• Early Life: Maurice’s creative inclinations began at an early age. He was born in Stockton, California, the son of a pastor father and a musician mother. The exuberant music and fashion he’d see during church services that he attended with his family inspired him and would later have a major influence in his work. He was especially drawn to the colorful, vivacious hats—many of which his grandmother (who worked as a milliner) designed—that women in the congregation wore. He is still inspired by his grandmother’s work today, which he describes as having a “natural opulence,” from its textures and movement to its bold, contrasting hues.
• Design world work: After leaving Stockton for Los Angeles, Maurice attended the Otis College of Art and Design. When he graduated, he put his art degree to work curating window designs for luxury department store Barneys and leisurewear brand Juicy Couture. His years creating massive installations led him to working with florals, which began to play a larger role in his work.
• Bloom & Plume: Floral arrangement jobs naturally started coming Maurice’s way after his window designing career came to a close. He launched his studio, Bloom & Plume, in 2010 and the business quickly took off. As a self-taught florist with a background in visual merchandising, Maurice brought a unique design sensibility to his arrangements. As the Bloom & Plume brand grew, so did Maurice’s entrepreneurial pursuits: In 2019, he and his brother, Moses, opened a coffee shop next to his floral studio, Bloom & Plume Coffee. The café has become a community hub, hosting groups and workshops that hold space for discussion around race and identity. These topics are meaningful for Maurice, who deeply embraces his identity as a gay Black man and imbues his designs with his personal experiences and perspectives.
• Celebrity work and brand expansion: Maurice’s work has garnered widespread attention on social media, and his following has grown on the platform to hundreds of thousands of followers. His story is featured on some of the world’s premier publishers, including Vogue, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, W Magazine, and The Hollywood Reporter, among others. His work has made it to major art institutions, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the San Diego Art Institute, and the Broad. In 2020, he collaborated with Beyoncé, who featured some of Maurice’s floral installations in Black Is King, her visual album.
  

From making a bouquet to creating table arrangements, Maurice Harris will help you tap into your creativity through flower design. Gain access to exclusive lessons from Maurice with the MasterClass Annual Membership.