Designers Annette Prechtl and Sandra Thaler’s label Elfenkleid (“elf dress”) has a name as evocative as its distinctive style. No, the two are not clothiers for the vertically-challenged. Rather, the duo’s beautiful creations are wearable avant-garde apparel. Distanced from fleeting trends and, indeed, almost archaic in their timelessness, the clothes are also characterized by clear forms, immaculate construction and unconventional details.

Starkness and romance have seldom been combined with such imagination. Their showroom and studio is housed in a former convent on the Margaretenstrasse. Meanwhile, Elfenkleid graces the catwalks of Paris and Milan, and now has a diverse following all over the world—literally, from Dubai and Lebanon to the United States and China.