The Austrian Fashion Association gathered around 350 guests at Kunsthalle Wien on 5 November for the Austrian Fashion Awards 2026, an evening that put ten labels on the same runway. HISU PARK, Laura Andraschko, Lore, Used To Be, Hao Wu / Sale Sale Studio, Miranda Matondo, Oliver Kuzma and Paul Alexander Reisinger, all funded in 2025 through AFA Support or a Start Scholarship for Fashion, showed alongside the two winners of the night: SAGAN Vienna, recipient of the outstanding artist award for experimental fashion design, and Florentina Leitner, who received the Fashion Award of the City of Vienna. Tor Studio built the set and lighting, Mauricio Nardi styled every look and Paul Ebhart composed the soundtrack.

Vienna gives its fashion prizes with a clear purpose: money a label can put to work. The Austrian Fashion Awards consist of two official distinctions, the outstanding artist award for experimental fashion design of the Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (BMWKMS) and the Fashion Award of the City of Vienna. Together they amount to 20,000 euros and rank among the best-endowed design awards in the country.

The 2026 ceremony took place on Thursday 5 November at Kunsthalle Wien in the MuseumsQuartier, hosted by artist and writer Sanna Helena Berger. An independent jury selected the winners: Alex Kessler of i-D Magazine, commercial director Britta Song, StyleZeitgeist founder Eugene Rabkin, Jonathan Lee of The Molecule in Hong Kong, and Robin Douglas Westling, founder of RDW and PR director at Our Legacy.

SAGAN Vienna received the federal award, given to designers with a significant body of work and international recognition. Tanja Bradaric and Taro Ohmae founded the accessories label in Vienna in 2016, and the jury praised the way it ties Viennese workshops and regional materials to a market that already reaches Paris, Tokyo and Shanghai. Florentina Leitner received the City of Vienna prize, a sum reserved for an international trade fair, showroom or festival appearance. The jury ranked her among the most compelling designers of her generation, in Austria and abroad.

The Austrian Fashion Association has supported both winners for many years. Its head, Camille Boyer, called them "outstanding examples of the diversity and international outlook of Austria's fashion landscape".

The runway widened the picture. After the winners came eight designers funded in 2025 through AFA Support or a Start Scholarship for Fashion of the BMWKMS: HISU PARK, Laura Andraschko, Lore, Used To Be, Hao Wu / Sale Sale Studio, Miranda Matondo, Oliver Kuzma and Paul Alexander Reisinger. Tor Studio designed the stage and lighting, Mauricio Nardi styled every look, and musician and DJ Paul Ebhart composed the soundtrack.

Seen in sequence, the ten collections describe a scene with real range: leather goods made with Viennese manufacturers, semi-couture from Antwerp, alpine wool, umbrellas cut into garments, menswear sewn from vintage stock. The audience matched it, with Hermann Fankhauser of Wendy Jim, Martin Niklas Wieser, Robert La Roche, Ojay Morgan (Zebra Katz) and Manuel Marelli of 10 Corso Como among the guests.

SAGAN Vienna

Tanja Bradaric, from Croatia, and Taro Ohmae, from Japan, founded SAGAN Vienna in 2016. Their handbags and small leather goods follow independent concepts made to outlast a season, produced with artisans from several countries and with Austrian houses such as Thonet, Carl Auböck and Petz Hornmanufaktur. Materials include LWG-certified leather, recycled textiles and grape leather. Logos stay discreet, and the design language is quiet and gender-fluid.

Florentina Leitner

Florentina Leitner graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, designed womenswear at Dries Van Noten and opened her Belgium-based label in 2021. Her semi-couture ready-to-wear is known for expressive prints and sculptural 3D blossoms, produced in limited quantities with small specialised ateliers in Italy. Autumn/Winter 2026, You Are a Star, follows a shy outsider on the way to the spotlight and pairs sleepwear with glamour. Paris Fashion Week saw it first, the label's eighth appearance there.

HISU PARK

Korean-Austrian designer Hisu Park grew up in a family of musicians, studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and founded her Vienna-based womenswear label in 2023. Her collections bring couture technique into ready-to-wear, cut from deadstock fabrics and made in limited runs. Femininity here reads as strength.

Laura Andraschko

Born in Berlin to Austrian parents and now based in London, Laura Andraschko graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2021. Her label feeds on nightlife and on the codes of European high society, with a sharp eye for class. Fall/Winter 2025, Après-Ski, took loden, tweed and Austrian tailoring to Paris and dressed them for the club. She received the Fashion Award of the City of Vienna in 2025.

Lore

Inga Nemirovskaia spent more than a decade designing knitwear for Haider Ackermann, Ann Demeulemeester and Alber Elbaz before founding Lore in Vienna. The label works with European wool only, from sheep grazing alpine meadows, and traces every step with regional shepherds, spinners and artisans. Design starts from the fibre, and the material decides the form.

Used To Be

Vanessa Schreiner runs Used To Be on upcycling. For a recent collection she sourced discarded umbrellas from flea markets, second-hand shops and vintage platforms, took them apart and cut new garments through experimental pattern-making. Each piece keeps visible traces of its former life, and photographer Oskar Ott stages every collection in a natural setting.

Hao Wu / Sale Sale Studio

Start Scholarship for Fashion of BMWKMS 2025

Hao Wu and Alexander Georg Lehner started Sale Sale Studio with a shirt, a pair of suit trousers and three fabrics. Their first collection, Copy Paste, copies those pieces, alters them and assembles them again. The result plays with the line between original and imitation and asks who decides the value of a garment.

Miranda Matondo

Start Scholarship for Fashion of BMWKMS 2025

Marie Matondo and Danaide Miranda design as a duo. Their collection Mosaico followed a stay in Agadir and pairs flamenco influences with Amazigh jewellery art. The clothes are made for movement and stay free of binary gender categories, leaving room for the person wearing them.

Oliver Kuzma

Start Scholarship for Fashion of BMWKMS 2025

A graduate of the Modeklasse at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Oliver Kuzma won the 2024 Rondo award with Spleen, a collection drawing on Edwardian and Victorian forms. His current work takes early Guy Ritchie films as a starting point and sets aristocracy beside the working class. Historical menswear becomes a sturdy contemporary wardrobe, made to be worn hard and to gain patina.

Paul Alexander Reisinger

Start Scholarship for Fashion of BMWKMS 2025

Paul Alexander Reisinger works mainly with vintage stock and used fabrics, so the past is already in the material. Alpine and floral references meet classic menswear silhouettes. Personal memory has a place in these clothes, and so does a more open idea of masculinity.

Images by Austrian Fashion Association

@austrianfashionassociation

Words by Donald Gjoka

@donaldgjoka

Styling: Mauricio Nardi
@mauricionardi

Styling assistants: Pauline Collet
@paulineflckr

Jonathan Niederbrunner
@jonathan.ndbr

Set and light design: TOR Studio
@tor_tor_tor_studio

Runway soundtrack: Paul Ebhart

Key make-up artist: Naomi Gugler
@naomzz

Make-up assistant: Parnia Sarraf
@parnia_sar

Make-up and products: MUD Studio
@mudstudiovienna