A Fashion Designer's Guide To Vienna

Vienna is not a city that comes to you. You have to go to it. Arrive on its terms, at its pace, with your eyes open and your preconceptions somewhere safely in your luggage, preferably at the bottom.

I have been to places that overwhelm you with beauty. Vienna does something quieter and more powerful than that. It asks you to look more carefully. It teaches you that restraint is not the absence of opulence — it is opulence with precision. Every palace, every church, every unremarkable doorway in this city has been considered. The lock, the light switch, the door hinge, the ceiling fresco three floors above where anyone might reasonably think to look. Vienna has spent centuries perfecting the art of devotion, and as a designer, being inside that devotion changed the way I work.

I arrived here not to collect inspiration but to compose it. To know what I was searching for, and equally, to know what to leave behind. The collection that came from this city — Elsewhere Palace — was born from that shift. What follows is my guide to the city that inspired it: Vienna.

Palais Coburg Vienna, one of the sources of inspiration for Camilla Franks and the CAMILLA Elsewhere Palace collection (2026).

Where I Stayed

Palais Coburg Residenz
Coburgbastei 4, 1010 Wien

Built on the ancient fortifications of the city, Palais Coburg has lived many lives. What it is now — a quietly extraordinary jewel-box luxury hotel that does not announce itself from the outside — feels like its truest expression.

I walked into the Yellow Salon and time stopped. That gilded cream and gold-leaf patterning, the crystal chandeliers hanging with quiet architectural confidence — it was a room that understood exactly how to shape light. The Blue and Green Salons carry the same quality: opulence, without noise. The Mirrored Hall, where reflections compound into reflections and the space seems to multiply endlessly, is one of the more arresting rooms I have ever stood inside.

The Cityscape Room's mosaic stopped me for a different reason. A designer's reason: sheer ancient, tessellated precision. The way small pieces of stone build into something vast and coherent, creating beauty through accumulation rather than grand gesture. It became a visual reference I kept returning to throughout the process of making Elsewhere Palace.

Vienna will ask more of you than any single hotel. But as a base, Palais Coburg allows you to inhabit exactly the kind of interior perspective that makes this city worth studying.

The Palace of All Palaces

Schönbrunn Palace & The Bergl Rooms
Schönbrunner Schloßstraße 47, 1130 Wien

I had the Bergl Rooms on my Pinterest board for years before I ever set foot inside them. Some places earn your anticipation and then double it. These rooms are those places.

The Bergl Rooms aren't part of the standard palace tour, which means most visitors to Schönbrunn never find them. Book a private guide and make them the reason you visit. Trust me, you won’t be sorry. Commissioned in the 18th century by Empress Maria Theresa, who found the upper floors of the palace impossibly warm in summer, they were painted floor to ceiling by the court artist Johann Bergl in trompe l'oeil landscapes — imagined gardens, impossible skies, exotic birds settled in painted arches, scenes designed to convince you that the walls have simply ceased to exist.

This is one of the more radical design ideas I have ever encountered: an entire room that refuses to accept its own boundaries. Walls that (as I came to think of it) couldn't bear to stay blank. It became the organising idea behind some of the most important prints in the Elsewhere Palace collection: Art For The Empress and Midsummer Masterpiece were inspired and painted directly from these rooms, capturing their grand arches, lace detailing and that suspended, romantic atmosphere. Sisi Society followed the same lineage, drawn from the Bergl Rooms housed within the Sisi Museum at Hofburg Palace.

Schönbrunn rewards more than one visit. Return on a separate day for the Porcelain Rooms — deep cobalt and crisp white, every surface decorated with hand-painted panels and ornamental medallions — which gave us Porcelain Parlour and Chinoiserie Child. And do not leave without visiting the Schönbrunn Zoo, the oldest still operating zoo in the world. The Breakfast Room, with its hand-painted fresco ceilings and gilded walls, where animals appear framed within baroque architectural borders, became the foundation for the prints Wanderlust Empire and Palace Zoology.

Schönbrunn alone handed us more than any other location on the entire trip. I suggest you plan accordingly.

Schönbrunn Palace Vienna: the Habsburg summer residence and one of the inspiration sources for the CAMILLA Elsewhere Palace collection (2026) by Camilla Franks.

The Imperial Quarter

Vienna's historic centre holds layers of Habsburg ambition accumulated across 600 years. You could spend your entire time within walking distance of the Hofburg and still not reach the bottom of it.

Hofburg Palace, Imperial Apartments & Sisi Museum
Michaelerplatz, 1010 Wien

The Hofburg was the Habsburg seat for six centuries, and it carries that weight in every corridor. The Imperial Apartments feel lived-in rather than museum-ified — these were people's rooms, and they still feel like it. The Sisi Museum — dedicated to the private life of Empress Elisabeth, affectionately known as Sisi — is genuinely moving. A woman who loved to travel and found the walls of the empire constraining, she was known for her rebellious streak and extraordinary costumes. You find kindred spirits in the strangest places.

Imperial Carriage Museum
Wagenburg Museum at Schönbrunn Palace, 1130 Wien

Do not underestimate this one. The Imperial Carriage Museum sits just footsteps from Schönbrunn and holds an extraordinary collection of state carriages and royal vehicles — black lacquered bodies, gilded ornament, horse harness creations of almost hallucinatory intricacy and gold detailing. The quality of the craft is awe-inspiring: the dark opulence, the costume detailing, the layering of gilded decorative work against inky black surrounds. Night Garden — one of my favourite prints from the collection — was born in this building. And the deep, regal foundations of Call Me A Carriage and Cloaked In Baroque were drawn from the same well: imperial grandeur, the theatre of evening, ornamentation placed exactly where it belongs, and nowhere else.

The Bergl Rooms at Hofburg Palace Vienna. The hand-painted trompe l'oeil murals were inspiration for the CAMILLA Elsewhere Palace collection (2026)

A City of Art

Vienna holds more great art per square metre than almost anywhere else on earth. As a designer, I did not move through these galleries as a passive admirer. I moved through them professionally — looking at composition, at how a figure sits within a pattern, at what scale does to emotion, at where the eye is led and why.

The Albertina
Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Wien

The largest Habsburg residential palace now houses one of the world's most significant collections: 65,000 drawings, almost a million old master prints. Klimt, Rubens, Picasso, Cézanne, Dürer, plus permanent masterworks including Monet, Degas and Renoir. I find Klimt endlessly instructive as a creative— the way he refuses to rank pattern and figure, holding them in equal visual tension, neither one decorating the other. That lesson arrives in his work, whether you're looking for it or not.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna: Renaissance Revival architecture and the Habsburg royal collection that inspired CAMILLA Elsewhere Palace prints Dandelion Skies and Chamber of Blooms.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum
Albertinaplatz/Maysedergasse, 1010 Wien

Built in 1891 to house the Habsburg royal collection, the Fine Arts Museum's Renaissance Revival architecture is itself worth the visit. The Chamber of Art and Wonders holds works from the medieval period through the Baroque — Raphael, Vermeer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Dürer, Titian. Time spent in these galleries shaped some of the season’s most romantic prints directly: Dandelion Skies, Chamber of Blooms and Wildflower Wunderland drew inspiration from the House of Habsburg collections, blending Renaissance Revival architecture with embroidery, lace and porcelain detailing into richly layered, romantic wearable art.

The Belvedere Palace
Prinz-Eugen-Straße 27, 1030 Wien

A UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the most beautiful Baroque palace complexes in Europe. The Upper Belvedere houses twenty-four works by Klimt — including The Kiss in permanent residence — alongside major works by Monet, Van Gogh and Rodin. The formal French gardens with their clipped hedges and reflecting pools are as considered as anything inside. Arrive early in the morning or late in the evening, before (or after) the crowds. Spend longer than you think you have.

The Elsewhere Palace collection (2026) by CAMILLA, inspired by the palaces and painted rooms of Vienna. Shop the CAMILLA official online store.

The Natural History Museum
Burgring 7, 1010 Wien

This was the visit that surprised me most. Opened in 1889 as the first true museum of evolution, the Natural History Museum houses some twenty million objects — gemstones, minerals, insects, pterodactyls, an extraordinary collection of taxidermied specimens. I took photograph after photograph of the butterfly specimens: their scale, their architectural symmetry, the almost graphic nature of their wing markings. The obsession with amplifying that scale and playing with form gave us Millamorphosis and Butterfly Bohemia — oversized butterfly motifs reimagined through vivid colour and expressive movement, blended with our signature CAMILLA signature animal print. There is something profound about a museum that holds what is gone alongside what remains threatened. It gives everything on display a kind of gravity that’s far from contrived.

The Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Wien

Klimt's Beethoven Frieze lives in the basement of this building, and it is one of the greatest things you can see in Vienna. The Secession movement — ‘to every age its art, to every art its freedom’ — created an architecture and a design philosophy that I find deeply aligned with how I approach print: organic detailing, ornament as meaning rather than decoration, freedom as formal discipline. The extraordinary Majolica House nearby, with its hand-painted ceramic façade, and the architectural medallion detailing throughout the district informed The Secession Sessions print equally.

Klimt's Beethoven Frieze at the Secession in Vienna, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which inspired the CAMILLA Elsewhere Palace collection (2026) prints Cloaked In Baroque (centre) and The Secession Sessions.

The Austrian National Library
Josefsplatz 1, 1015 Wien

Europe's largest Baroque library, housing over 200,000 historic books. The Grand Hall, with its 128 bookshelves, cabinets built from floor to frescoed ceiling and bountiful books bound in red, blue and yellow Morocco leather, is one of the most beautiful rooms in the world. I say this without qualification.

Markets & Hidden Treasures

The markets of Vienna are where the city's more intimate life unfolds. Where the layers of history are for sale, or at least for handling, and where you find the things that you absolutely weren't looking for... and yet somehow cannot live without.

Am Hof Art & Antiques Market
Am Hof, 1010 Wien

Open Friday–Saturday, 10am–6pm, March to November

This quiet square across from the Am Hof Church is more than it looks from the outside. Unassuming at first glance, the market unfolds into an array of antiques, paintings, porcelain and objects that hold their stories without explaining them.

CAMILLA Elsewhere Palace prints Millamorphosis and Butterfly Bohemia by Camilla Franks were inspired by butterfly specimens at the Natural History Museum Vienna and the Am Hof Art & Antiques Market.

Naschmarkt
Mariedlgasse, Wien

Vienna's largest market has over 500 years of history and close to 120 stalls offering fresh produce, flowers, art, vintage clothing, ceramics, jewellery and fine china. I come to markets everywhere I travel as a creative act — the sensory experience of a great market always feeds the work. Even if you are not looking for anything in particular, go.

Vienna Flea Markets
Flohmarkt Wienerberg: Wienerbergstraße 27a, 1100 Wien

Metamarkt: Stadlauer Str. 41A, 1220 Wien

Sunday is market day, and Vienna's Sunday flea markets ask something of you: an early start, comfortable shoes, a willingness to get lost. Flohmarkt Wienerberg is a sprawling open-air market with vintage and antique treasure at every turn. Metamarkt operates out of a vast old factory space on the city's outskirts — overwhelming in scale and completely irresistible. This is where I found the collection of vintage Austrian prayer cards — intricate paper cutouts with layered sacred scenes, traditional imagery of such delicacy and strange beauty that I couldn't leave them. Those cards became the foundation for Painted Prayers and Verses In Vintage: treasured scenes reimagined through a CAMILLA lens, with love hearts, signature totem animals and stacked statement motifs. Some of the most collectible prints in the entire Elsewhere Palace collection began on these market tables.

St Anne's Church Vienna and Stadtpalais Lichtenstein Vienna. Two of the city's architectural jewels discovered by Camilla Franks during the trip which inspired the CAMILLA Elsewhere Palace collection (2026).

Vienna's Architecture

Walking Vienna is an education in proportion. The grand Ringstrasse boulevard, the domed palaces, the Baroque churches with their elaborate façades — this city thinks in silhouette, and that thinking stretches as far as the eye can see.

St Anne's Church
Annagasse 3B, 1010 Wien

Unassuming from the outside. Quietly revelatory within. A Baroque masterpiece originally built in the 14th century, rebuilt after a fire in 1747 with trompe l'oeil ceiling frescoes by Christoph Tausch — a student of the great Baroque illusionist Andrea Pozzo. Vienna returns to this idea again and again: the wall as fiction, the ceiling as an invitation to elsewhere. Seek it out. It is small and overlooked and worth every minute.

Stadtpalais Lichtenstein
Bankgasse 9, 1010 Wien

One of two Vienna palaces belonging to the princely Liechtenstein family, freshly restored after nearly five years of painstaking renovation. Built between 1692 and 1705, it holds the confident proportions of the best Baroque architecture — formal without rigidity, ornate without excess, unapologetically opulent. Visit when it opens to the public; the restoration has been done with genuine attentiveness to the original.

Vienna State Opera
Opernring 2, 1010 Wien

You do not need a performance ticket to appreciate this building — though if you can attend one, you should. The first major building on Vienna's Ring Road, opened in 1869, it is a complete statement about what a city believes art deserves. The scale. The interior detailing. The particular sense of occasion that Vienna understands how to build into a room.

An Evening in Vienna

Griechenbeisl
Fleischmarkt 11, 1010 Wien

Vienna's oldest restaurant has been open since 1447, still in its original building. Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and Mark Twain have all signed the ceiling of the private dining room. There is something deeply affecting about eating somewhere with this kind of continuity — the sense that these walls have held so many evenings, so many conversations, so much ordinary human life layered across centuries. The food is traditional Viennese. The experience is something else entirely.

Mozart Haus
Stephansplatz 12-4, 1010 Wien

Two Mozart Haus venues exist in Vienna: a museum and a concert venue. The concert venue is the oldest concert hall in the city, housed within the building where Mozart kept his first Vienna apartment. Where he performed. If you can secure tickets for an evening chamber concert, do. There is no better way to close a day in this city than with music in a room where the music was first made.

Camilla Franks in Salzburg, around 3.5 hours from Vienna, during the Austria trip which inspired the CAMILLA Elsewhere Palace collection (2026).

On Leaving Vienna

Vienna is not a city you complete. It is a city you begin, and hope to one day return to.

I came here with a new design language in mind — something more composed, more architectural, more attuned to what happens when opulence and restraint are held in the same hand. What I found was a city that had been answering those questions for four centuries and had arrived at some very beautiful conclusions.

Elsewhere Palace was born here. Its name, its spirit — the stillness inside the richness, the ornament balanced by air, the confidence that comes from knowing what to leave out — it all unfolds exquisitely within these rooms, these streets, these extraordinary interiors that Vienna keeps, quietly, only for those who are willing to look.

Auf Wiedersehen, Wien. Until next time.

Explore the Elsewhere Palace collection

A Fashion Designer's Guide To Vienna

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