Florentina Leitner stamped her surrealistic whimsy on a repertoire inspired by the 1982 cartoon “The Last Unicorn,” its animé style proving a good fit with her vivid imagination and yielding pastel shades, puffball skirts, flowers and bows.
The Antwerp-based Austrian designer often takes cult movie references as her starting point, and this time, she and her team worked directly with Peter S. Beagle, the author of the novel that inspired the film, who is now in his 90s.
The result was a little like My Little Pony on acid, with a cropped hoodie featuring a miniature horn like a reinterpreted onesie, while heeled pumps had their own ponytails.
Cartoon images and logo T-shirts intermingled with hyper-girly dresses worked with Leitner’s habitual quirk.
The terrain was fertile for her signature esthetic of full crinkly skirts, slinky tab-front and asymmetric dresses and ruffle-adorned sportswear. Laser cutouts, 3D floral embroideries and appliqués, ribbons, ruffles and metal eyelets with feathered trims were among the many playful adornments on display.
The plot of the movie informed the transition of the lineup from the bubblegum punk esthetic of the opening looks to the darker, more gothic vibe of the latter part of the show.
“We wanted to bring it into our world, with transfiguration of this light, fairytale girl into the dark red bull in the movie that’s really fierce and fiery,” Leitner explained. “We wanted to work with this transformation from the nice girl to the bad girl.”
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