Tabitha Takes On . . . Liberty Florals.(Tabitha Simmons)

Byline: editor: Sally Singer

For British stylist Tabitha Simmons, a part of her closet remains forever England.

Someone said to me once that even the most hard-core hipster English girl can't resist chintzy cabbage roses, that it is in our blood. Well, not mine. My fashion flowers of choice are pretty, pastoral buds by Liberty. I've adored them ever since I was a teenager, when I would take strips of the London store's printed cotton and stitch them onto a denim jacket. They always blossomed, I thought, when they were cultivated to look a little tougher. I still believe that, and that's how I'll wear this spring's multitude of English sprigs done by everyone from Junya Watanabe to Roberto Cavalli. One of Cavalli's dresses (ABOVE) can lose its sweet, romantic look when you layer on a cotton fatigue shirt. At the end of the day, I want to feel like I am dressed to stride down a concrete sidewalk, not tiptoe through the tulips.

This Junya Watanabe jacket is amazing. I like wearing it to play one Liberty print against another floral, though if you're going to do it, I say always mix prints of a similar scale. But it doesn't matter if you don't want to wear it that way. It would also look great with a white tee and a pair of superwide khakis.

The prints are delicate, so the proportions of your jewelry--preferably mosaic floral cuffs and charms--should be similar. You can go weightier with an ornate shoe.

Charming teeny tiny buds--with black? Not an obvious pairing, perhaps, but I particularly wanted to match the silhouette and length of this jacket with the dress rather than go for the more obvious nipped-waist blazer. It gives you a whole new way to think about evening from now until fall. And it's not just fashion's new guard interpreting florals that way: When I went to see Oscar ...