Austrian Fashion Designer Florentina Leitner started her brand 2021 after graduating 2020 with her Master from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Fashion Department in 2020. After her Master she worked for Antwerp based fashion brand Dries Van Noten.
But then decided to stay in Antwerp and create her own brand that takes inspiration from strong female characters, and wants to celebrate femininity, and dressing up.
Florentina is known for colourful prints, new textile combinations, 3D Flowers and fashionable accessories, like sunglasses. The brand tries to work together with artisanal factories in Italy, Belgium and Austria and sources fabrics as sustainable as possible.
Florentina Leitner (©)Florentina Leitner
We talk with Florentina: let’s discover more about her!
– What are the biggest challenges you have met in your career?
Sometimes there is a new challenge popping up every day, specially in the beginning everything is new and yet to be discovered by me and my team. For example, it was tricky to register the brand name in different countries, in China someone already registered my logo and brand name so this was a big problem but I got it fixed and learned a lot from this situation. Also organising your first fashion show is a thrill, you think everything possible is going wrong until the last minute but the stress gives you a lot of adrenalin and I am here for that too!
– Outside of fashion, what are you currently interested in and how is it influencing your work?
I am very interested in water, that is really my element, I just bought fish and also learned wave surfing the last months so maybe this is a signe to do deeper into this topic for my spring summer collection. I am pisces in my zodiac and scorpio rising so double water elements.
I also love taking long baths haha and reading books while in the tub, at the moment I am reading “Howl’s moving castle”, I loved the Studio Ghibli movie and found out that its an book adaptation actually, so I bought it last year on my thailand trip when I saw it.
– What is the message you want to send, and what kind of people are you referring to?
I am referring to strong but sensual women, in my last collection FW23/24 I got inspired by “Joan of Arc” and witch burnings in the medieval times. I wanted to tell the story that all these powerful women survived the fire and blossomed again from the ashes with my last collection.
– What is your main source of inspiration?
Stories, all kinds of stories. Mostly stories I make up in my head, it helps me to tell a tale with my collection and let customers dive in a world.
– What about your next project?
I just came back from Paris Fashion week and rested the last few days in my bed in Antwerp, but I already have new projects coming up which I look forward to! But they are still top secret!