It shouldn’t be big news to anyone that leather and trousers do not a lederhosen make. After all, there are plenty of two-legged items of clothing made of leather do not look a bit like Bavarian lederhosen – and aren’t intended to, either. Just look at bikers’ leathers, for example, made of smooth black hide and covering the whole leg: they are designed for the practicalities of riding motorbikes, and – for some reason we’ve never understood – don’t have any floral stitching like traditional Bavarian leather breeches…
Then there are some leather trousers which are supposed to look like German lederhosen, but don’t really tick all the boxes for traditional Bavarian design. Some of the worst offenders are sold in the weeks before the Oktoberfest as “Bavarian lederhosen”, but are made of material that Bavarians wouldn’t even carpet their outhouses with: imitation leather, poorly-treated cowhide (not even nappa leather!) or low-grade goatskin of a quality that traditional manufacturers would turn down at the workshop door. It’s simple: the journey to genuine Bavarian lederhosen always starts with the choicest, professionally prepared goatskin or deerskin leather. Nothing else will do.
Due to its excellent value for money, goatskin is the classic material for “first-timer” lederhosen. Both visually authentic and robust, a pair of goatskin leather breeches can be worn for decades. Nevertheless, it is always second to deerskin leather, gained from the hides of red deer Soft and yet hard-wearing, as comfortable as it is strong, and featuring an exceptionally attractive natural graining, the “lederhosen for life” is almost always a deerskin pair.
We make a point of offering our customers both good-value goatskink- and some of the best, priciest deerskin lederhosen out there. That allows us to be the shop that people use both to buy their first ever pair of authentic Bavarian lederhosen – a “trial version” that really looks, feels, and plays the part – at an attractive price and to acquire exquisite lifetime lederhosen that will still be being worn to the Oktoberfest in 50 years.
Customers looking to buy genuine deerskin lederhosen will, quite rightly, be interested in the detail of how our leather is processed. One of the brands we stock, Stockerpoint, is one of the very few manufacturers of traditional Bavarian Tracht to stick to the age-old buffing and tanning methods as they are applied in Austria; this fully natural approach is all but forgotten outside of the traditional clothing industry, and as such, customers who purchase lederhosen from Stockerpoint are making a decision to support what would otherwise be a dying art. Similarly, our suppliers Krüger Buam have the most exacting standards on the leather they use. Besides the cultural importance of the techniques, buying this kind of leather is a decision for sustainability, both due to the strong laws on hunting and species protection for deer in Austria and due to one simple fact: this kind of lederhosen is one you only ever need to buy once.