Bespoke tailor · Vienna · Founded 1858
Knize
Said k-NEE-tseh
A Viennese house behind an Adolf Loos shopfront, cutting a shoulder nobody else cuts.
Knize is the best-known surviving Viennese tailoring house. Its Graben shopfront, designed by Adolf Loos in 1913, is a landmark of modern architecture, and the house cuts in the Viennese tradition: a high built shoulder, a very close chest, and hand finishing carried further than most.
The shop
Adolf Loos designed the Knize premises on the Graben in 1913, and it is one of the very few tailoring shops that is also a significant work of architecture: a dark, narrow, precisely proportioned interior that has survived largely intact.
The house itself dates from the nineteenth century and served the Habsburg court, which is the origin of its formal and ceremonial practice.
The house cut
A high, defined shoulder built up rather than padded flat, a chest cut very close, a marked waist and a relatively long skirt. Against an English coat it is higher and closer at the shoulder; against a Parisian one it is less rounded and more upright.
Internal finishing is carried to a degree that Viennese tailoring is specifically known for, including work on parts of the garment that will never be seen.
The Viennese coat
High and defined at the shoulder, very close through the chest, with an internal standard of hand work that even other bespoke traditions regard as excessive. It is a distinct school, not a variant of the German or English one, and there are very few workshops left cutting it.
The Loos interior
Adolf Loos's 1913 shop is a small, dark, precisely proportioned interior in mahogany and brass, and it is studied as architecture independently of what is sold in it. Loos wrote about men's clothing as well as buildings, and the connection is not incidental: his argument against ornament and his admiration for English tailoring are the same argument.
For a visitor to Vienna it is worth seeing whether or not a coat is being commissioned.
Images
Licensing →
The record
What it costs
Prices across the site →These are not quotations. Prices below are the most recent figures we could attribute to a source, shown in the currency they were published in.
| What | Service | Price | Observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two-piece bespoke suitAn indicative band, not a quotation. Bespoke entry prices normally exclude tax and cloth beyond the house bunch, and houses raise them without announcement. | Bespoke | €6,000–10,000 | September 2026 |
Houses often considered alongside it
Grouped because they compete for the same commission or work in a comparable idiom: not a ranking, and not an equivalence.
Picture credits 3
- Knize cossa: Photograph · C. Cossa · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 at
- Knize suit: Photograph · Gryffindor · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
- An illustration of the house's recorded cut: roped shoulder, full canvas chest, sculpted shoulder, very clean close chest, high waist. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art