We’ve spent years observing the developments in Bavarian clothing – after all, that’s pretty much job as purveyors of the finest Bavarian fashion and traditional Alpine looks. So we’re well placed to recognise changes in the market; not “trends, which are plentiful and often short-lived, but real change.
The big change we’ve seen over a period of, say, 10 years or so is that the bottom end of the market is slowly but surely withering away as the people who once bought all of the ghastly Bavarian costume pieces at the airport or train station on the way to the Oktoberfest are trading up to the genuine article. Then there are the stream of people actually moving to Munich – the city is booming and its labour market is one of Germany’s most international – and who have both the money and the motivation to look for the real deal.
So it’s “Goodbye” to cheap and cheerful party pieces made of felt, paired with “Dave’s Stag-Do Munich 2006” t-shirts and “Hello” to real leather; it’s “Auf Wiederhsehen” to shocking pink dirndls made of sweaty synthetics and “Guten Tag” to properly stitched, tastefully designed dresses in real country house style.
After all, if you’re headed to the Oktoberfest for the second, third, fourth time and are still enjoying it, you’ve suddenly got a reason to invest in something that is comfortable, looks good, and can be worn year after year.
Similarly, if you’re living in Munich, you’ll have realised that Tracht is not just a once-a-year thing. In fact, younger Bavarians especially are now wearing lederhosen and dirndl to all sorts of occasions: trips to beer gardens, watching Bayern München football matches, and the range of summer fairs and festivals in and around Munich.
And when you have real friends in Bavaria who invite you things like weddings and christenings, you’ll see that guests are now often asked to come in traditional clothing. This is new, too, and is a sign of a generation looking to reconnect with tradition: that doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to get involved if you’re not from that part of the world – in fact, it should be understood as an opportunity, in donning traditional Bavarian garb, to make the tradition your own. What it does mean, though, is investing some time, thought, and – not least – money in looking the part.
With all of this in mind, we made the decision several years ago to really focus on quality first. Of course we haven’t taken the brakes off on prices – our customers want a good deal as much as they ever did – but we make sure that we don’t go below the minimum for genuine Bavarian quality. We were confident that our customers would be prepared to look beyond the first and cheapest offer they see and really look at what they’re getting for their money – and we’ve been proved right. We offer everything from a low-price “first pair of lederhosen” for someone looking to try the real thing through to premium pieces for convinced wearers of Bavarian clothing in the market for a life-time pair of lederhosen. What both these lederhosen – and everything else on our spectrum – have in common is that they are guaranteed hard-wearing, comfortable, and authentic. Nothing more – but absolutely nothing less.
“Cheap and cheerful?” How about getting really happy with a real pair of lederhosen, with a genuine Bavarian dirndl. Together, we can put an end to the quick-and-dirty "authentic costumes" at Munich train station...
