Florentina Leitner (Q3144)

Florentina Leitner has had a year full of new experiences—and we’re not talking about the ones the global pandemic brought to all of us. The young Austrian graduated with a master’s degree from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, landed a job as a womenswear designer at Dries Van Noten, and founded her own label. To top it off, Leitner was invited to open Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin, where she showed a collection she called “semi couture.” “A lot of hand-sewn details, complex cuts, and delicate fabrics are used for our couture pieces,” she said. “We make nothing en masse, and the fabrics we use are mostly deadstock, which makes the pieces sustainable. What I love about couture is that it’s something you keep for generations. I have ball gowns that my mother and grandmother wore and have now passed down to me.”Leitner’s collection for spring 2022, Vacation on the Moon, was inspired by a holiday in her native Austria. “There is a lake called Mondsee [Moon lakein German]—the name inspired me. I always wanted to show my Austrian heritage more in my collections and started researching traditional Austrian costumes,” she said. During the design phase, Leitner heard a lot about space travel on the news (hello, Jeff Bezos), so she incorporated humanity’s urge for space travel into her collection. This resulted in “different shades of blue from the lake and metallic colors from the moon and outer space,” she said. Her homeland was evident in Austrian flowers such as edelweiss, which appeared in crocheted form and as prints in the collection.