Off stage, garments are hung on clotheslines that stretch across the hall. It’s hard to tell models from guests until one of them unpins and releases a pair of leg warmers from the line, and starts changing into a new look. She meanders through the space, full of photographers and onlookers, and makes her way to the stage in a sweet cardigan with a misbuttoned gingham placket, teamed up with a pair of denim shorts and the aforementioned leg warmers pulled high on bare legs. Then, repeat: she heads down, sheds the previous look, and assembles the next one with garments suspended in the air among other objects: polaroids of models donning looks from the collection in various bucolic settings and even fat, salt-encrusted pretzels. 

As Andy Warhol told the New York Times in 1977, fashion shows are an art form, more exciting than the theater. Presentations, I would argue, are just as big of an esthetic experience, especially when designers go all in on immersing guests into the world they’ve built their collections around. At her spring-summer 2027 presentation in Paris, Florentina Leitner transports us to the idyll of Salzburg, Austria, where more than a half-century ago, The Sound of Music immortalized the von Trapp family’s flight from their homeland.

Hailing from Austria, Florentina launched her namesake brand in 2021 after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, where she now lives. It wasn’t until earlier this year that, while being thousands of miles away from home, she finally watched The Sound of Music. “This romantic, almost dreamlike version of Austria felt strangely familiar,” she says in the press release. “It took moving away from my home country to recognize something in this very Americanised image of it.” She reminisced on summers spent at her friends’ lake house — hiking, swimming, and watching the fireflies flickering at night. 

“There is something very special about these summers, and I wanted to capture that feeling,” she says. The collection is also largely informed by the traditional tracht of the region — like the dirndl, which first appeared in rural regions of Bavaria and neighboring Austria in the 1800s, before it was adopted by the upper and middle classes in the first half of the 20th century. Florentina offers several different versions updated for today. The short, puffed sleeves of the dirndl are adopted into easy-breezy blouses, and its low-cut, tightly laced bodice is reimagined in knit and denim. Apron-style dresses with abbreviated hemlines are made for blazing summer days, and mini skirts are pleated à la the classic dirndl. 

Denim shorts are inspired by the lederhosen, the dirndl’s male counterpart of knee-length pants. Traditionally made of deer leather, Florentina proposes hers in denim and puts her own spin on the floral scrollwork that typically adorns the front of the garment. Of course, the von Trapp family’s wardrobe from The Sound of Music is also used as inspiration. “I was drawn particularly to the children’s clothing, the sailor collars and slightly uniform-like silhouettes,” she says. “We translated these elements into the collection in a preppy and playful way.” 

There’s also a gray jacket-and-skirt pairing that reminds me of (an infinitely more playful version of) the getup Maria wears as she arrives at the von Trapp manse. Another flirty, ruffled ensemble is dreamed up in the same dusty-rose as the chiffon dress worn by Liesl von Trapp during the “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” gazebo dancing scene. Even more sweet and coquettish are the bows that appear everywhere — from dainty little ribbons securing braids to massive, three-dimensional motifs that make a statement out of otherwise simple tanks.

Elsewhere, gingham is the summery, feminine print that Florentina uses to bring to mind picnic blankets unfurled on a balmy afternoon in the countryside. Checks are diffused under a layer of organza, or used as trims on shorts, and cuffs and plackets on cardigans. This season, the designer also partnered with Circ, a textile recycling company, incorporating recycled denim and pink satin into the collection.

The Sound of Music was a big part of my own childhood, and standing here, I feel oddly nostalgic and even a bit wistful. That the presentation is taking place in a church, not unlike the Benedictine monastery where Maria starts out as a novice, is particularly clever. But even those who aren’t fans of the movie, or have never seen it, will find something charming in Florentina’s version of Mitteleuropa fantasy: a glimpse of the simple, unhurried life, if only temporary. 

“It was important for me, bringing the collection back into the landscape that first inspired it,” she says. “I want to present a story: clothes drying in the summer sun, windows open, being outside all day, coming home from the lake, the mountains in the background. And the feeling that there is nowhere else you need to be.”