“Our collective yearning for nature and the solace that it brings, especially during the pandemic, has led to a fixation on all things earthy.
Experiencing the outdoors has become something of a luxury, Hyland suggests, with fewer people having access to green spaces or free time to enjoy them.
“I’ve definite seen an uptick in people wanting nature-themed tattoos,” says Stephanie Cecchini, owner of Lady Luck Studio in Goshen, New York.
When she recently decided to get her first tattoo, she sent the artist, Patricia Mazzata at Hudson River Tattoo a watercolor painting of the tree.
Over the course of nine months during the pandemic, she got a tattoo sleeve of flowers on her arm, approaching it as she would a floral arrangement.
“While nature’s incursions into fashion used to be less literal — think botanical prints — we’re now seeing designers incorporate more of the natural world into their work,” says Hyland, of Elle.
For their Fall 2022 collection, Private Policy designers Siying Qu and Haoran Li were inspired by the Netflix documentary “Fantastic Fungi,” Hyland says, which showcased fungi’s deep and mysterious connection to the forest.
“Mushrooms have been a big through-line over recent seasons, and have even found their way into luxury fashion,” says Hyland.
This spring in New York, Sarah Burton staged her Alexander McQueen show amid piles of wood chips and also celebrated mycelium.
Redbubble.com, which offers work by independent artists, has scarves with imagery of lapping waves, geese in flight, pheasant feathers and dappled sunlight in the woods, among other offerings.
Eilyn Jimenez of the Miami-based firm Sire Design says clients are asking for homes that provide a sense of calm.
Jimenez employs “green tones like emerald, olive, seafoam and hunter for wall color or large furniture pieces.
Sarah Jefferys, who has a design firm in New York, uses glass sliding doors and large windows to open up interiors to the exterior.