Swiss Ladies keep 18th Century Fashion alive

[joyful_molly]

Today I’m writing about something I don’t actually know much about: national dresses. Or rather, cantonal dresses, as we’ll be talking about Switzerland. Each canton - even each district! - has its own historical dress.

What has this to do with 18th century fashion, though? A lot! Many of these dresses have their origins in the 18th century,

Comments

[sturmbringer]

My family comes from Burgenland, which is in the southeast part of Austria. There are regional fashions, although they vary a lot. Contrary to the western, alpine parts of the country however, there is no such thing as the "Krachlederne", the short leather pants the men wear and which are probably associated with Austrian regional fashion the most. Here, men wore long, mostly dark pants with boots instead and generally, the colors were darker and not as vibrant. Heavily influenced by hungarian and even more so, croatian sources (a lot of croatian folk in southern Burgenland).

And unfortunately, I cannot find a decent picture anywhere, it's all the modernized crap, grrr...

After the war, most people in the region were ashamed for their poverty and their nationality and regional fashion got... well, out of fashion. Until today, it is much more popular in the western area where people proudly wear them on special days. Here in Vienna now, it is not very popular to wear regional fashion, I think it has the slight taste of Nationalism because political figures who lean towards the right tend to wear it. So it has become an uncommon sight here and people with a "Dirndl" or a "Trachtenjanker" get looked at in an odd way.

The things people wear as "regional fashion" today, mostly have nothing to do with the original looks and is a modernized version. Generally, the trend in the past few years has gone from original, to "Oktoberfest"-fashions. Bright colors, lots of boobage, short skirts. Honestly, this doesn't have much to do with the real thing, but some of the designs are still beautiful.

[joyful_molly]

Here in Vienna now, it is not very popular to wear regional fashion, I think it has the slight taste of Nationalism because political figures who lean towards the right tend to wear it. So it has become an uncommon sight here and people with a "Dirndl" or a "Trachtenjanker" get looked at in an odd way.

Heh, funny that you're saying that, because it was one of the things we really noticed when we went to Vienna - the great number of Dirndls and Trachtenjanker on the street! :-D But maybe we only noticed because you don't see anyhting like this here at all, at least not in the city.

I'm not a huge fan of the modernised dirndls - the Bratwurstpromis wearing them doesn't help. Minidirndl and plexi platforms - uaaaah! *shudder*