Timeless Holiday Decor

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are often a whirlwind of joyful, but slightly chaotic decorating magic. For some, holiday decorating means starting fresh with the latest trends. For others, it’s about honoring traditions and telling family stories. This month, Shannon Pallin, florist extraordinaire and owner of local floral and design shop, Fiore, shares her tips and trends for combining both approaches to create an elegant, quirky and highly personal holiday vibe.

Pallin shares that this holiday season, the pendulum has swung back toward timeless elegance. Designers are embracing traditional decor elements like heritage plaids, classic red and green palettes and the shine of polished silver that’s spent most of the year in storage.

“Ralph Lauren’s classic design aesthetic is having a moment this year,” Pallin said. “That preppy, refined look resonates with people who want their homes to feel both festive and sophisticated.”

For Pallin, this trend aligns perfectly with her personal holiday décor plans. She’s hosting a family gathering in memory of the Christmas Eve parties her grandparents threw each year in California.

In my opinion, a good plaid never goes out of style.

For Pallin, this trend aligns perfectly with her personal holiday décor plans. She’s hosting a family gathering in memory of the Christmas Eve parties her grandparents threw each year in California.

“Those celebrations were rich with tradition,” she said. “My design vision for 2025 honors that legacy while bringing in fresh elements.”

One of Pallin’s most practical tips is to plan summer displays with holiday potential in mind. She repurposed apple and citrus sprays from her shop’s summer inventory, working them into this year’s holiday tree designs. On impulse, she added tomato sprays to the mix.

“I liked the colors and shapes and honestly wasn’t sure how they’d read,” she said. “But they were surprisingly popular. You can see them in our client’s tree, and people keep asking about them. I love adding citrus and fruits to any arrangement because they’re seasonally multi-functional. A lemon branch works as well in July as it does in December.”

Plaid ribbon and ornaments have also returned to center stage, though Pallin insists they never truly left. “In my opinion, a good plaid never goes out of style,” she said. “We’re carrying incredible plaid ornaments this year with dark green velvet and just a touch of bling, so the sparkle hits right. As designers, we’re always circling back to what we haven’t done in a while and reinventing it with unexpected elements. We don’t buy an entire look from our suppliers. We hunt for different ribbons, sprays and garlands to create something unique. The magic happens in how you layer them together.”

That approach is seen in both her shop displays and client installations, where the mix of textures, colors, citrus and tomatoes combine with personal touches and heirloom ornaments to create a look that is both on-trend and highly personal.

In the Home

Stephen Mack and his husband, John Robertson, asked Pallin to tackle their holiday decorating this year for an upcoming party themed Home for the Holidays. The concept focused on embracing all that Christmas brings, both the beautiful and the imperfect.

“When Shannon and I first started talking about this, it was like, how do you use every decoration you have in the Christmas box?” Mack said. “Because we all have those decorations that we don’t put out or we don’t know what to do with, and that was the idea behind it.”

Pallin opened every single one of the couple’s many ornament boxes, pulling from a collection that ranged from Mack’s mother’s hand painted Smurf ornaments and his childhood tree topper to modern pieces and gifts from friends. The result blends personal history with Pallin’s design vision—tomato vines and citrus tucked among evergreen boughs, plaid mixed with unexpected pops of color and layers of meaning in every branch.

The tree Pallin had displayed in her shop became the inspiration for the couple’s home installation. Mack gave Pallin creative freedom to interpret their vision, trusting her instincts with combining the collected ornaments with her signature unexpected touches.

“I just let her go with it, and we couldn’t be happier,” Mack said. “It’s the perfect compilation of all of our Christmas stuff. It’s beautiful.”