In Milan, the weathering of stone, the pull of tides and the strange beauty of a landscape under pressure become a language for the body. For Spring/Summer 2027, Florania enters darker territory with “Surfacing,” a collection conceived by founder and creative director Flora Rabitti around the tension between nature’s magnificence and its capacity to unsettle.
Presented on September 24, 2026 during Milan Fashion Week, the show took place at the Leather Fashion Hub in Piazza Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, within the tenth edition of Lineapelle Designers Edition. Florania was among the labels selected for the Spring/Summer 2027 program, with Lineapelle as the project’s main partner and Crocs collaborating on footwear developed specifically for the runway. Music for the show was curated by Carloalberto.
The starting image for “Surfacing” is cinematic in its contradiction: a peaceful Italian lake caught in the middle of a storm, encircled by waves and foam. From there, Rabitti moves into the realm of eco-Gothic, where environmental anxiety meets the shadowy psychological atmosphere of Gothic storytelling. Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation appear among the collection’s literary touchstones, opening a conversation around humanity’s increasingly fraught relationship with the natural world.
It is a concept particularly attuned to the present. While contemporary culture wrestles with questions surrounding artificial intelligence and consciousness, Florania redirects attention toward a physical planet already undergoing profound environmental change. The collection turns to the Romantic Sublime—that centuries-old fascination with nature as something simultaneously beautiful, overwhelming and terrifying—and asks what happens when its force is translated onto the human silhouette.
The answer begins at the surface. Geology becomes an unlikely vocabulary for clothing. Stratification, sediment, erosion and matter altered by exposure to the elements inform the collection’s tactile character, alongside more transient organic images of flowers, tides, seaweed and foam. Leather is treated with airbrushed color so that pigment behaves almost like weather itself, visually wearing away at the material. Textiles are manipulated until they suggest crusts and accumulated sediment, giving garments the impression of objects that have been discovered rather than freshly made.
The partnership with Lineapelle extends this material investigation. Leather is approached as a mutable surface through finishing, airbrushing and metal-chain techniques that open and reconfigure it. In the runway presentation, sculptural leather tops appeared alongside pleated pieces, crumpled gauze, dramatic oversized hats and Crocs punctuated with studs, bringing Florania’s underground sensibility into a landscape of texture and altered proportion.
Knitwear, a recurring laboratory for the Milan-based label, becomes particularly expressive. Open constructions conjure vegetation and water; yarns contract, loosen and fray, while unfinished-looking edges recall strands of seaweed or the residue of foam left at the waterline. Draped knits circle the body with the irregularity of ropes pulled from the lake, and layers of silk generate volumes that seem deliberately unstable.
There is something almost archaeological about the result. Clothes can appear dusty, corroded or mineralized, then suddenly become nearly weightless. Rather than imposing a pristine surface onto the body, Rabitti imagines new skins shaped by the environment—silhouettes that can feel organic, protective and faintly animalistic.
Color deepens that impression. Sand, bone and ecru take their cues from stone and dust, followed by ash gray, anthracite, midnight blue and rock black. Against those muted geological shades comes a concentrated interruption: cochineal coral. The saturated hue connects to Florania’s established interest in natural dyeing and, within “Surfacing,” introduces living color into an otherwise eroded landscape.
That emphasis on material transformation sits naturally within Rabitti’s broader practice. Founded in 2021, Florania has developed its identity around circular design, artisanal processes and the reuse and elevation of existing materials. Its in-house approach incorporates upcycling, textile manipulation and natural dyes including cochineal, indigo, alkanet, turmeric and elderberry, while production is organized in small quantities and through made-to-order methods. Rabitti’s work has also been recognized by Camera Moda Fashion Trust: in 2023, Florania received the MAX&Co. Design for Change award, which led to a subsequent capsule collaboration with MAX&Co. centered on circularity.
With “Surfacing,” those principles become less an explanatory manifesto than an atmosphere. The collection allows erosion to become ornament, instability to shape volume and environmental unease to enter the visual pleasure of dressing. Its optimism is subtle. It resides in the possibility that clothes can communicate an idea before language catches up—that an image projected through dress can carry ecological consciousness into public view.
The storm, then, is never merely a backdrop. It is embedded in the clothes: in a frayed edge, a corroded-looking surface, a mineral shade, a silhouette that seems to have adapted to unfamiliar conditions. Florania’s Spring/Summer 2027 woman, man or wearer emerges from that landscape transformed, carrying traces of water, stone and weather across the body. And after the turbulence comes the most compelling image of all: a figure still standing at the water’s edge, dressed for a future that remains unwritten.
