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The florist Ren MacDonald-Balasia, 35, is known for her bright, tumbling avant-garde arrangements: towers of giant orange orchids for the Hauser & Wirth gallery in Los Angeles; a sweeping, spiky installation of tropical bananas and burgundy hanging amaranthus for the Beverly Hills Loewe boutique.
But for the December opening of her new Renko Floral showroom and store in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, she stuck to a more neutral palette.
Designed by the architect Marcela Olmos, 35, MacDonald-Balasia’s 1,000-square-foot shop emulates the rusty orange and brown color palette of her beloved Japanese grandmother’s home in Hawaii’s Manoa Valley.
In a corner, dozens of Asian pears spilled out onto the floor, shrouded in braided seaweed and white lace-like Micronesian ginger leis.
For the party, the chef Angel Dimayuga, 39, transformed the space into a Zen garden. With help from the production assistant Anna Kernecker, 35, they set up an interactive Japanese-inspired landscape of drinks and snacks around the store.
For dessert, the artist and baker Rosalee Bernabe, 35, of the cake company Chariot made Hawaiian and Asian-inspired sweets — including coconut sponges with lilikoi curd and orange blossom buttercream — that were designed to match Dimayuga’s theme.
The first guests arrived just before 5 p.m. and immediately volunteered to help.
The florist Jenya Tsybulskyi, 39, was put to work plucking white star-of-Bethlehem flowers to add to an ice sculpture of craggy rocks that served as a raw bar.
“People will move mountains for Ren,” said MacDonald-Balasia’s assistant, the florist Jessica Juarez, 34.
As more friends arrived, they wandered between the food stands, eating off sticks and out of the palms of their hands.
They picked chocolate-covered Korean shine muscat grapes hanging from a treelike structure of red-osier dogwood twigs, and grazed on pink pickled radishes carved into the shape of flowers, snacking and talking until long after the event had been meant to end.
The attendees: MacDonald-Balasia’s guests included Ariel Rezek, 34, the founder of the fashion brand Rezek Studio, and her partner, the documentary photographer Lindsay Apatow, 34…
The décor: MacDonald-Balasia’s office table served as the party’s dessert centerpiece…
The food: “I’ve admired Angel’s work for so long,” said MacDonald-Balasia of Dimayuga. “I feel like we’re kindred spirits.”
The drinks: At a steel table by the entrance, guests served themselves glasses of Ghia’s nonalcoholic Le Fizz beverage and Blanchard Perez’s cava…
The music: MacDonald-Balasia had recently fallen for the Japanese city pop musician Tatsurō Yamashita’s early 1980s track “Sparkle” and tasked her husband, the filmmaker Andrew Balasia, 34, who was also at the party, to curate a jazz-centric playlist inspired by it…
The conversation: “Ren just brings people together,” said Juarez.
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