STYLE
Style Spotlight:
Grow Her
Own Way
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Fleurette founder Christelle Scifo has built a unique business, home, and personal aesthetic shaped by memories gathered around the world
With a resume that reads (but is not limited to) creative director, set designer, floral stylist, and brand consultant, it’s impossible to pigeonhole Christelle Scifo. That’s why the local creative built a business that lets her do it all. Fleurette, which Scifo describes as “the culmination of my multi-disciplined self”, gives others the chance to harness her wide-reaching skill set, and provides Scifo with the freedom to work with what she loves, be that flowers one day and fashion the next. Running her own company also allows Scifo to satisfy another passion: travel.
Growing up on Sydney’s northern beaches, Australian-born Scifo moved to her father’s native France for five years after she finished high school, and frequently returns to Paris for months at a time, which she compliments with regular trips to Bali. “If I stay here [in Australia] too long I feel [that I] can get stagnate, so creatively I need to travel to give my eye the opportunity to travel, too,” says Scifo, who sees spending time abroad inextricably linked to her work process.
This wanderlust also trickles into the home that she shares with her partner—a garden flat set within the grounds of one of the earliest Victorian properties in Manly’s North Head. Although only a temporary residence while renovation is done on their Fairlight home just around the corner, the space is filled with nostalgic pieces discovered while travelling.
Professionally celebrated for her unique floral arrangements, it’s no surprise that Scifo’s home often brims with plants, especially either side of a project, but you’re just as likely to notice an elegant single stem styled within a ceramic vase—a Fleurette signature.
Her ethos when it comes to incorporating flowers and foliage into the home (“something with scent, with a meaning or foraged and found”) further underpins her approach to fashion. “My clothes all represent something to me, a moment, a city, a memory. I collect, keep, reuse and recycle a lot,” explains Scifo, naming a roster of French labels that ground her classic-cool aesthetic.
Isabel Marant (“my all-time favourite”), Chloé, and Jacquemus top her list of go-to designers, though homegrown brands such as Matteau, Albus Lumen and Lucy Folk give Scifo’s laid-back Parisian vibe an Australian spin. The key though, is her vintage finds, those pieces possessing history, like an original Dior Saddle bag discovered in a Paris thrift store with a bargain €100 price tag, or a shell anklet picked up during a summer vacation to Positano.
The enviable mix of elegance and effortlessness that Scifo exudes cements her steadfast clarity of vision across myriad forms of creative expression. But, when things do start to get overwhelming, it’s the nature-filled Manly lifestyle that sets her mind at ease. “The ocean, the sky, the sounds, the sunsets, the moon—it creates calm, inspiration and energy and helps to keep things in perspective,” reflects Scifo, who after a long day tackling city traffic savours returning to her seaside suburb. “Coming down Sydney Road at sunset with views out to Shelly Beach gets me every time.”
Credits
Photography Daphne Nguyen
Words Natalie Mell