Remi & Gold
There are few things I find more intimidating than writing a piece about my beginnings. In part it’s because I’m still piecing together my beginnings myself and in part because I typically like to tell a story in a glamorized fashion simply because it’s more fun that way for me (yes I’m a Gemini). For the sake of honoring this series of Origins I’m going to play my hand at vulnerability. This won’t be my typical story full of the frills and thrills of my love of flowers (although the love is very real) but rather the story of how flowers were my lifeline.
Photography by Feather and Twine.
Let’s start with what I have pieced together so far in terms of my own origins.
In 1989, my birth year, my German parents immigrated to America from the mountains of Mexico. Being a first generation American is a wild and tumultuous experience, especially growing up speaking a language other than English. I don’t remember much of childhood but I do remember being extremely curious. In the small west Texas town I was raised in, anyone who was remotely seen as ‘different’ was made fun of. So I spent the first 15 years of my life feeling extremely insecure and ‘less than’. It took me many years to piece together that mine wasn’t an isolated experience and that this treatment rings true for most immigrants all over the country. I often think to myself that I would do anything to go back to when I was 11 and tell that little girl that being culturally diverse and knowing more than one language would benefit me more than words could ever say in the not too distant future. To tell myself that beyond my lived experience in my tiny town, there was a great big world full of brilliant mysteries and souls that celebrated each other's differences and in fact encouraged them.
My parents are not Hispanic but rather Mexican so we are all white in skin color. This is important because it made a giant difference in the way I was treated by my peers. It wasn’t until I went to college that I became aware of the white privilege in my own life. Truth be told I can’t imagine how much more difficult it is being an immigrant in this country with a darker skin or features that aren’t European. I know with certainty my world would have looked very differently and played out differently as well if I hadn’t been a white immigrant. It’s a deeply dark and complex truth that needs to be squashed and dismantled. Equality and non-discrimination are basic fundamental human rights that should be at the core of our ethos.
This is probably the part of the story where I should also share that I was raised in a religious community of conservative Plautdietsch Mennonites. I was raised in a world where men made all the decisions and were not to be questioned as the authority figures of the household by women. A world where as a woman your rights were to reproduce and honor your husband. Which meant that all baptized women that I knew over the age of 18 wore head coverings and were homemakers. In fact, I didn’t know any women that had their own career or didn’t have a husband. You would attend church anytime the doors were open and the rest of your time would be spent making meals, cleaning, helping on the fields, and doing whatever other duties the men needed done. No one was allowed to have TVs and we all attended a private Mennonite school so we would not be tempted by worldly things influenced by others outside of our faith. Being part of a very polarizing religious group added to being isolated, being discriminated against and having hateful things being spewed at me from a young age. For as long as I can remember I had one mission and one mission only. It was to get out. It would become my sole mission. I’ve always had what I call an inner knowing. A knowing that I had my own identity and I didn’t need a church or a man to tell me who I was.
Flowers entered the narrative for me in a unique way. I couldn’t have imagined a world in which I would own a brand that would allow me to be financially stable, give me a creative outlet and help empower other women all at the same time. Truth be told I’m still trying to sort this all out but here I am.
Between the ages of 17-24 I moved from my hometown in west Texas to Tulsa to Las Vegas to Los Angeles with a quick stop in Phoenix before ultimately landing in Austin. Growing up I didn’t know any women who had ever been to college much less lived a financially independent life without a husband. My mom always worked with my dad who owned his own business but it wasn’t a traditional career with a 401k and retirement fund. They both hadn’t been able to graduate from high school while growing up in Mexico and had to work hard to keep their family of 6 fed. They were always barely making ends meet. Seeing how hard they had to work to stay afloat taught me not to take lightly the opportunities within my reach in America.
I knew I wanted to go to college and I wanted to study business (well truth be told I wanted to study philosophy and did but I also understood I would need business skills if I wanted to survive in America). After graduating college in a recession I knew I wanted to pursue a career in something that could potentially be ‘recession proof’. Cue weddings. I started on the planning side and quickly realized that I needed to be on the design side. From the very first moment I tried my hand at floral design I knew that my stars had been written for me. I decided to move to what I considered the mecca of weddings because I figured if I wanted to get my foot in the door anywhere Las Vegas was sure to be the answer. And for me, it was. It was there that I discovered the world of floral design and never looked back.
I’m 31 years old and I now design for over 150 weddings a year with a full-time team of brilliant designers. I started Remi + Gold when I was 24 on my own dime, no outside funding or loans, no secondary income to float the underperforming months. Now I have the privilege of designing all all over the world in Africa, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. My work has been in Vogue, Martha Stewart and the New York Times and we’ve even landed a magazine cover or two. We’ve designed for dozens of major brands including Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, Mercedes-Benz, and Goop. And most memorable to me, I’ve had the honor of designing florals for Sir Elton John.
Flowers were my lifeline. Flowers were my ticket out and now they are my expression of freedom. My expression of equality. My expression of love. Flowers are my peace. As a global citizen of humanity, I firmly believe that it is each our duties to continue the fight for equality for all in whatever way it is that you fight. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said "no one is free until we are all free."
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Twyla Rochelle is the Founder and Creative Director of Remi + Gold, a floral creative agency located in Austin, Texas. Twylais a first generation American and an advocate for equality and supporting fellow immigrant dreamers. She has over a decade of experience in the wedding + event industry and started Remi + Gold when she was 24. She went from running the business solo for the first 2 years to curating a team of brilliant full-time designers who are like family to her. She believes that flowers have magical powers but the people behind the brand are the true magic. Remi + Gold does over 100 weddings a year and is known for their large scale installations, their out-of-the box designs, and their fun team energy. Remi + Gold has had the honor of flowering all over the world including Europe, Africa, Australia, and South America.