Ten years after founding Popup Florist, Kelsie Hayes has fully settled down. Trained as a fashion designer, Kelsie early in her career worked as a creative director for a luxe, now-defunct clothing label that staged picnics and other surprising in-store happenings. These events are what inspired her to become a self-taught florist. Her speciality: coming up with arresting ways for fashion brands to get people to crawl out from behind their screens.
Initially peripatetic, Kelsie ran pop-ups and set up 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. After being repeatedly asked for the perfect NYC location to hold events, Kelsie realized it was time to open her own.
A decisive sort, Kelsie knew that the second place she looked at was The One. She also happens to be visionary: the site, a former lighting showroom a block from Popup Florist’s work studio in NYC’s West 28th Street Flower District, was nothing more than an industrial white box. It’s now House of Three, a clubby, flower-filled gathering spot that feels conjured from a dream. It’s where Kelsie and crew host private events and creative workshops.
As for the name House of Three, she says she came up with it because she wanted the space to feel like a home and three is her lucky number: “I always come back to three,” she explains on Instagram.”Rule of thirds, things in threes. The third month of the year, a quiet transformation, from the last frost to the first bloom. It was also my own transformation, when I became a mother. My family—the trio that shapes everything I create. This is House of Three.”
Come see.
Photography by Ori Harpaz, courtesy of Popup Florist (@popupflorist) and House of Three (@houseofthreenyc).
