Bavarian pants made in China unravel Oktoberfest

23 September, 2008, 11:10

This year’s Oktoberfest, the annual showcase of Bavarian culture, has been clouded by complaints that traditional clothes are made outside the country, mainly in China, India and Eastern Europe. Locals say such Lederhosen (deer-leather trousers) and Dirndls (women’s dresses with corsets) have nothing to do with authentic Bavarian dress.

Purists believe folk costumes should be made where they are worn and contemptuously call the clothes sold in Munich department stores ‘yuppie outfits’. For them, saving costs does not matter at all. They would prefer to pay 600 euros for a pair of good Lederhosen rather than 150 euros for a ‘fake’ made in the Czech Republic or India.

However, true Lederhosen, the fine lace and embroidered leather costumes, deriving from clothing worn by Bavarian mountain farmers, is not that easy to find as there are less than 100 makers of traditional outfits remaining in the region. Many German textile firms were forced out of business by low-cost foreign competition.

Things are even worse for women’s Dirndl, traditionalists say, with Dirndl fashions changing from year to year. Although Munich women are quite happy with variations in pattern and colour, the folk dress is taking more modern features.

Despite such warnings, neither Bavarian culture nor the Oktoberfest appear to be under threat. The festival has become more traditional in recent years, with more national music heard instead of disco. This year some 9,000 of those who took part in Sunday’s parade, were no doubt wearing authentic locally made Bavarian clothes.

The Oktoberfest goes back to the wedding in October 1810 of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig with Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. Back then the celebration lasted for five days and set a tradition of annual public festivities, which only interrupted in wartime and during two cholera epidemics in 1854 and 1873.