How to dress for winter – the Viennese way

Quietly elegant in its formality, Vienna is a bastion of Mitteleuropean charm – a quality that the city’s residents reflect by favouring stylistic restraint over excessive glamour. But there’s more to the Austrian capital’s understatement than meets the eye. With its high-collared Loden coats, Viennese style expresses something of the city’s heritage as the former seat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This is also where, at the turn of the 20th century, the secession movement of Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann and others broke from artistic and design conventions, and where Sigmund Freud conceptualised psychoanalysis.

Though the shadow cast by its history is long, today Vienna moves at its own pace and on its own terms. “The luxurious thing about Vienna is that it’s still a slow city,” says editor and art historian Nela Eggenberger when Monocle meets her for breakfast at Café Prückel, which has served the city since 1903. Here, waiters in bow ties busily ferry silver trays stacked with eggs, chive toast and cream coffees. Two women in matching turtlenecks enjoy a catch-up while elderly men gather in a booth, setting the world to rights. “We have coffee houses where you can sit for hours without being pushed to consume more,” she says. “There’s a saying: ‘When the world ends, go to Vienna because everything happens 10 years later.’”

For creatives, the city’s pace allows ideas to percolate and develop slowly. With her friend Pia Draskovits, Eggenberger co-founded Pinea, an online publication that covers contemporary photography, with a print magazine slated to launch in early 2026. In her pleated neckerchief and forest-green Loden jacket – designed by her late friend, Austrian fashion designer Claudia Brandmair – Eggenberger looks like a modern equivalent of the Viennese women who Klimt painted in the 1900s.

As we leave Café Prückel and head towards the Innere Stadt, we spot grandes dames wearing pearl necklaces and cashmere coats. Here, the ornate buildings offer an opulent backdrop for anyone running errands near Stephansplatz or sipping a midmorning mimosa at Zum Schwarzen Kameel. As in most cities, the most formally dressed people are, let’s say, women of a certain age.

“Vienna has a classic quality that is difficult to escape,” says Tanja Bradaric, co-founder of leather-goods brand Sagan Vienna. “Subconsciously, there’s a layer of something traditional in our creations.” She isn’t the only person we meet in this city who tells us that fashion occurs to them on a subconscious level – an apt comment in Freud’s old stomping ground. When Bradaric greets us at her brand’s shop on Gutenberggasse, she is wearing a Jil Sander shirt, a leather coat by Enrico Borino and a red scarf from Mühlbauer.

Originally from Croatia, the designer moved to Vienna to study fashion before meeting her business partner, Taro Ohmae. After a stint working for Balenciaga in Paris, the pair moved back to start a brand in 2016 and soon received two awards from the Austrian Fashion Association. “There used to be the idea that being in Paris or London was a form of confirmation for a brand,” says Bradaric. “Now there’s joy in finding a cool label from Helsinki or Vienna.”

Sagan Vienna’s ambition is to design leather accessories that complement a life well lived. “I find inspiration in books or exhibitions,” says Bradaric as she grabs a folder filled with cut-outs of details referenced in her collections. The braided reins of the Austrian capital’s horses are echoed in the strap of a bag. The woven seats of German furniture maker Thonet’s bistro chairs are reinterpreted in leather.

An advantage of being based in Vienna is that the city draws a cultured international clientele in search of well-crafted souvenirs. Visitors might cross the Danube from the old town to head to Song, a design-and-fashion concept shop nestled in the Leopoldstadt district and run by South Korean transplant Myung-il Song. There’s also Anouk in Neubau, a family-owned concept store that offers a selection of fragrances, knitwear and trainers.

The city’s residents provide plenty of wardrobe inspiration. Well-heeled gentlemen go about their day in heavyweight jackets. Students in shearling coats mingle in the courtyard of the University of Vienna. We meet Helena, a philosophy student who is also a part-time model, and Lucien, who reads history. The city’s colder temperatures – and proximity to popular Alpine ski resorts, from Lech am Arlberg to Ischgl – mean cocooning cloaks, oversized scarves and woollen fedoras are staples.

As the sun sets in the early afternoon, we meet Klaus Mühlbauer, the fourth-generation owner of internationally renowned hat manufacturer Mühlbauer. (It’s only in a city such as Vienna that the foremost fashion brand would be a 120-year-old headwear maker.) As Mühlbauer greets us at the company’s headquarters near Schwedenplatz, hatters are hand-shaping felts into fedoras and cloches. “In Vienna, there’s the influence of the mountains, particularly in terms of the hat shapes,” he says as he pulls a series of silhouettes from the shelves. “Compared to British hat fashion, we’re less oriented to special occasions and millinery. We don’t think in terms of costume. We’re in the field of ready-to-wear.”

As darkness falls and 17.00 approaches, the craftspeople put down their tools and pack up to go home. “Vienna is a good place to work because there’s no rush,” says Mühlbauer. “For everyday life, it’s good to have quiet surroundings. But there’s still the openness of a city. It’s not a big fashion hub but the craft is still vibrant.”

Soon we make our own departure to see the streets of the Innere Stadt light up the night and twinkle with Christmas decorations. In the spirit of the season, throngs of people make their way to after-work drinks, dinners or their evening’s entertainment. Near the Vienna State Opera House, we encounter Elisabeth, who is meeting her son at the Hotel Sacher before seeing Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. In her black knee-length coat, tailored trousers and a pair of diamond stud earrings, Elisabeth seems to be an embodiment of Vienna: sophisticated and perfectly proper, busy but in no rush.