Whence
Lederhosen (leather breeches)
Fashion

Where does Lederhosen (leather breeches) come from?

Lederhosen come from the Alps of Bavaria and Austria. Leather breeches were once worn all over Europe, but they lived on in these mountains as tough work and hunting wear, and a costume revival from the 1880s made them festival dress.

Work trousers for steep slopes

Lederhosen probably go back to the late Middle Ages, when they were worn for hard physical work because leather lasted longer than cloth. In the Bavarian and Austrian Alps they were the work trousers of farmers, raftsmen and Alpine dairymen. The everyday form there was cut above the knee, giving workers and hunters more freedom on steep slopes; the first written account of this cut comes from August Lewald's visit to the Tux valley in Tyrol in 1835.

A teacher saves the costume

Deep in the Eastern Alps lederhosen stayed popular, but on the edges of the mountains their everyday use declined. In 1883 Joseph Vogl, a school teacher in the Upper Bavarian village of Bayrischzell, founded an association to preserve the local costume; he and his friends had tailors make short leather trousers in the old style. Similar clubs, the Trachtenvereine, spread from Munich to Salzburg and Vienna. King Ludwig II supported them, and noble hunters such as Prince Luitpold were proud to be seen in lederhosen.

Why people say Switzerland

Switzerland shares the Alps, but the leather breeches English calls lederhosen are the traditional dress of southern Germany, Austria, South Tyrol and Slovenia. Their best-known stage is Munich's Oktoberfest. In 1910, for the festival's centenary, a costume parade was directed by Julius and Moritz Wallach, early promoters of dirndl and lederhosen as everyday fashion. Today lederhosen and dirndls are worn at Oktoberfest events around the world.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Lederhosen ↗ · oktoberfest.de ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Oktoberfest ↗

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