The art of arranging flowers
The Art of Arranging Flowers by Shozo Sato
Michael Andorfee takes the lift up to the offices at Dogma9, admiring his hair and Japanese jacket in the mirrors whilst reflecting with relish that any woman in the office would probably give him a blow job in the lift, if he asked them. He just hasn’t asked yet. How to get (a)head in advertising. He walks through the office in slow motion, like a movie star or royalty. The creative guru has arrived. In the kitchen, the timid new office manager says she likes his jacket and asks if it’s vintage (and not, is it new?). Thanks, Michael says, yes, yes it is vintage, with an approving lilt in his voice. I got it in Japan recently. Since Japan he’s been to New York, and now he’s back in the London office, partly to check the design mock-ups for a pitch for a new client.
Andorfee swans over to the design desks to view the designs on screen. Six other people suddenly materialise behind him; creatives, account handlers, groupies. Michael first looks at James's work. James has spent days on it. He looks at it for maybe five seconds, says it’s too fussy, too complicated, and moves over to Alex’s desk. This is more like it, he says. Alex is beaming. It actually looks like a Gap ad or a black and white Calvin Klein ad from the 1990s. With bland, meaningless text wrapped around some chiseled male figures.
Michael likes the photos… they remind him of a photographer whose name he can’t remember… Alex jumps in with “Terry Richardson?”, presumably the first, hip photographer he can think of. No, no, no, chants Andorfee. I like Terry but not what he does with kids. Cue canned laughter. There’s the implication that he’s worked with Richardson. Andorfee finds the photographer he was thinking of online and shows Alex. Ah, yes.
Michael Adorfee doesn’t like the text. The text needs to be organic, he says. I can change it, enthuses Alex. Try handwritten text instead, suggests Michael. Alex immediately looks for handwriting fonts. No, no, no, intones David. Try actual handwriting. Genius! Everyone applauds. It occurs to James – whose designs were dismissed in five seconds – that Michael looks maniacal and crazy and may be an idiot. There’s something of the Emperor’s New Clothing about him, and not just the Japanese jacket.
Michael strolls over to his own desk and brings back a book with a spine some two inches thick: Shozo Sato’s The Art of Arranging Flowers. Published in 1966, this book has acquired cult status for pretentious designers and creatives with more money than sense. To everyone else it just looks like a boring, old-fashioned book of flower arranging. The invoice is still inside Michael’s copy, from IDEA, the poncy ‘super’ bookseller on Dover Street Market, said by Vogue to be the ‘coolest publisher in the world’. The book cost Michael £125, though it can be bought on eBay for about £17. It’s all about context.
Michael tells Alex the book is beautiful and useful for inspiration. Alex stares at it blankly but gushes, ‘Of course, brilliant, yes!’ Michael asks him if he’d like to borrow it. As he hands the book to Alex – i.e. there’s no option but to borrow it – there’s a moment of awkward confusion as Michael also has his notebook in the same hand, and Alex thinks he’s asking him if he wants to borrow his notebook. ‘Well, don’t you need your notebook?’ Asks Alex in confusion. Not the fucking notebook, says Micheal, the book. Relieved laughter all round. In fact, every time Michael says anything, there’s nods, yeses or laughs from the groupies.
Michael is regularly interviewed for creative magazines where he makes predictions such as ‘2017 will be the year for creativity in advertising’. Naturally he’s working on a novel, a screenplay and a play but doesn’t have time to finish them. His Instagram account has 15k followers but being a creative, Michael states that Instagram is ‘for writers’, and posts photos (rarely his) of an advert or newspaper headline or screenshot and writes besides it witty cynical commentary (self-deprecating yet superior sounding), to which his many admirers comment ‘you are the best’, ‘bravo’, ‘incredible’ and ‘you are amazing’, which certainly doesn’t go to his head. Annoyingly I find myself chuckling at his clever copy, but at the same time realising it’s fairly similar in tone to, say, the Dos and Don’ts in Vice magazine I also used to chuckle at. Some comments celebrate that he’s ‘STILL GOT IT’. Implying, one day, one day, he won’t. Advertising and social media are fickle friends and he’s almost the wrong side of 30.
Michael gets up and goes somewhere else, perhaps to go do some Japanese flower arranging. Like a puppy eager to please his master and still basking in that warm glow, Alex jumps up and gets everyone in the office to write a sample of their handwriting on a piece of paper. James rolls his eyes and almost imperceivably shakes his head. I walk out and presumably never go back.