Contrary to appearances, the famous peasant dress that befits so many busty blonde Germans has not always been worn at Oktoberfest. And it's not even a traditional costume.
Imagine the Munich oktoberfest outfit with its cohorts of Bavarians feasting in Lederhose, the folkloric skin panties, seated in line in the huge beer tents, but without its luscious Bavarians with cheeks rosy by alcohol, corseted in their colored Dirndl just as garish. Unthinkable! Not so long ago, however, the only Munich women who wore the “traditional” dress at Oktoberfest were the accompanying waitresses capable of carrying six liter mugs in each hand without leaving their smile.
In cotton or silk, this romantic outfit for some, very kitsch for others, is worn over a short-sleeved mini-blouse, with an apron. This last element is very important, since the way to tie it gives precise indications on the availability of the one who wears it. The dream of any self-respecting flirty. If the apron is tied on the right, it is a married woman. On the left, it's the opposite: on your marks. Widows, on the other hand, wear the knot in the back. In the past, young virgins would tie their aprons at the front - a practice that has fallen into disuse - fortunately.
Gabriele Papke, Oktoberfest Press Service Manager, explains:
“ In the 1970s and 1980s, we went to Oktoberfest in jeans, dressed in street clothes, quite normal. You can also see it in films and photos from the 1960s. The only ones that wore Dirndls were those that came from the mountains, the countryside. And then in the 1990s, “Landhaus Mode” (country house fashion) made its appearance. Today the Dirndl and the Lederhose have become a must have ”.
Boom since the 2000s
Today, around half of the seven million visitors - 72% of whom are Bavarians - that this great popular festival attracts each year in October, go there dressed in folk costumes. According to Dirndl specialist Simone Egger, researcher at the Institute of European Folklore and Ethnology at the University of Munich, this boom dates back to the early 2000s:
"It was mostly young people who started buying second-hand costumes to go to Oktoberfest, and combining them with their own style for fun, wearing them with sneakers or denim jackets ... It was also around this time that stylists began to take an interest in Dirndl. There were reports, it developed little by little. People started to take their old Dirndl and Lederhose out of the closet to wear to Oktoberfest. And then, naturally, the industry kicked in, and in 2006 it really got into hype. One would have expected this fashion to decline: this is the case for the Lederhose but not for the Dirndl, which has become a classic in the women's wardrobe. As they often have several, they naturally want to wear them,"
Fantasy of noble city dwellers
Unlike the Lederhose, which dates back to the 18th century and was a work garment commonly worn by peasants and hunters in the Alps, whose robustness they appreciated, the Dirndl is not a historical costume. It only appeared at the end of the 19th century, not to meet the needs of peasant women but to satisfy the fantasies of noble city dwellers on vacation in the Bavarian Alps, a bit like Marie-Antoinette, who was fleeing the the melancholy which life at court inspired in her when she went to play at the shepherdess in the false Norman village that she had had built in the park of Versailles . As Simone Egger explains:
“ In 1810, at the very first Oktoberfest, no one could wear Dirndl because it just didn't exist. The city dwellers were dressed in French fashion, with empire-style dresses. The Dirndl appeared around 1880, when modern tourism developed and upper-class ladies began to vacation by the lakes of Bavaria. At that time, a seamstress must have had the idea of creating summer dresses inspired by the very simple working dresses of the maids . ”
The dresses that Bavarian peasant women wore at that time were rather austere: scarcely sketched neckline, petticoat falling to the ankles, dark colors, coarse fabrics, made to keep warm and last. A bit like the one Julie Andrew wears in the pastoral opening scene of the cult musical La Mélodie du Bonheur (the action of which is actually located a few kilometers from the German border, in western Austria, which shares many traditions with Bavaria):
The flair of the Munich marketing department
The Dirndl didn't actually start to be associated with Oktoberfest until the 1960s, when Munich was a candidate to host the Olympics and the city's marketing department had the idea. smart to send pretty girls in blouses and petticoats to major events abroad to promote the Bavarian art of living. The photos of the 10,500 hostesses dressed in pale blue Dirndl , hired to welcome international visitors during the 1972 Summer Olympics then toured the world, and certainly did much to seal the legend of a Dirndl that has always been owned to Oktoberfest imagery.
It was therefore from this time that we began to see the Dirndl in the streets of Munich, where it had become rare since the end of the Second World War: soiled by Nazi propaganda, we do not no longer dared to take it out of the closet, as Simone Egger recalls:
“ It began to be worn by a new generation who did not associate it with old negative memories, because the National Socialists had used images of folklore to convey their ideas. The German woman was not specially depicted in Dirndl, but the images of Eva Braun , Hitler's companion, which show her in this dress on the Obersalzberg, near the Berghof, have remained famous. "
Dusted, reinvented by a generation of stylists who give it a glam side, like Lola Paltinger , or exotic for the African Dirndls of the adopted Munich women Rahmée Wetterich and Marie Darouiches, who cut their dresses in fabrics Multicolored traditionally used for making boubous, Dirndl is no longer perceived as old-fashioned in southern Germany, where it can now be found as far away as Stuttgart, which is not yet part of Bavaria. It has become a fashion item in its own right, on which the trends in classic clothing fashion are reflected.
The guarantee to be sexy, whatever your weight
At the same time, this usually expensive garment - several hundred euros - has become completely popular. The offer on the internet is considerable, and many specialty stores have popped up in the streets of Munich in recent years. It has become something of a mass phenomenon, with the Bavarian dress being worn by everyone, regardless of age or income level.
If you are not looking at the sacrosanct made in Germany, you can now afford a dress for less than 100 euros. What saddens Martha Gebler-Indra, guardian of the Indra Trachtenmoden temple, a Munich institution where we have come to have custom-made Dirndl cut for 60 years, where we are proud of having dressed stars such as Paloma Picasso and where the most refined models exceed the 1000 euros mark. For her, the causes of the current Dirndl boom are more to be found in the clothing itself, which makes any woman sexy:
“ It's a very feminine garment. Whether you are thin or stronger, with a Dirndl you are well dressed, well fitted, it highlights all the qualities of a woman. "
It is also tempting to see in the renewal of this costume a tendency towards identity withdrawal, towards regionalism. A German journalist even gave the Dirndl the nickname “ Bavarian burqa ”. A touch of humor that Simone Egger finds exaggerated. For her, it is above all a social phenomenon:
“ It's a group phenomenon. If my friends dress like this, I want to wear this kind of clothes too. It should also be taken into account that more than a quarter of Munich residents come from elsewhere. Many people come from abroad or from other Länder to work in Munich, because the region is prosperous economically. Wearing the folk oktoberfest outfit is to show that we are part of the city, of the region, that we are happy to be here. "
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