Floweruary 2013

This post was written by Lindy Shopper.

It’s that time of year again, where the ladies and gents of the swing world don lovely blooms in the midst of winter in celebration of Floweruary. This the third annual Floweruary and I am looking forward to seeing more creative wearing o’ the blooms, as the OcTieBer participants had some particularly creative uses of neckwear for 2012, raising the bar for sartorial challenges.

What is Floweruary? A sartorial challenge for the month of February, whereby you wear a flower (real or artificial) somewhere on your person every day for the entire month. Hair flowers made up the initial blooms, but since then people have come up with other creative ways to incorporate flowers into their ensembles.

So how can you celebrate Floweruary with others this year? There are several options:

1) The initial Tumblr group, established by the Philly dancers, is still going strong – check it out and participate by uploading photographs of you wearing your daily blooms at http://floweruary.tumblr.com/

2) For the past couple of years, this event has been initiated by a Facebook invite, but it looks like a local Facebook group is a presence this year. The group is sponsored by the Cookeville Swing Society in Cookeville, Tennessee, whose organizers have decided to donate $0.10 to a charity every time one of the Cookeville dancers (or anyone who has ever danced in Cookeville) posts a photo of themselves participating in the Floweruary challenge and tags local dancer Kyla Anderson. In addition, the proceeds of all sales of flowers and clips at CSS events will go to charity. Last year Cookeville raised money for The Lindy Hopper’s Fund of America and this year’s charity is the Kickstarter campaign for BLIP: Bringing Swing to Panama City and the Disabled.

3) Set up an Etsy Treasury of your favorite handmade blooms.

4) Check out Jo Hoffberg’s A Month of Hair – a hairstyle a day, coinciding with Floweruary 2011.

5) Can’t afford more flowers? Make your own with help from Jesse Hanus’ blog post Hair Flower Tutorials, with advice and links to tutorials on how to make your own flowers for Floweruary.

In a new turn of events, it looks like Floweruary has some haters, but there’s nothing redeeming about a blog that serves the purpose of relaying apathy and negativity. Clearly, we all have better things to do.

Floweruary is a celebration of joy, beauty, and charity, and we’ll keep that in mind all month long. Happy Floweruary! Let the blooming commence!