Since we sell Bavarian fashion for a living, we sometimes get too deep into the details and forget that, for a lot of people outside of Germany’s sunshine state, the very idea of wearing things like lederhosen and dirndls is outlandish, scary even. The two main issues people from outside of Bavaria have are, firstly, whether it’s okay to hijack other people’s traditional dress and, secondly, whether they’ll look silly wearing it or not
Now, in our experience, these two questions are related. How so? Well, put simply, Bavarians have very little against anyone – regardless of where they come from – sporting their traditional costume. For many Bavarians, there’s nothing nicer than meeting people from Manchester to Mexico City wearing their traditional dress out of love for the world-famous Munich Oktoberfest and Bavarian beer. If anything, they see it as an honour more than as an insult – but with the one major reservation: that tourists wear national costume, not compromise it.
Go real or go home
Viewed from the other end, the issue is the same: if you think you’ll look stupid wearing Bavarian lederhosen or a dirndl, you won’t – but you will look stupid wearing cheap imitation “leather” shorts or embarrassingly low-cut party dress. So really, it’s a win-win if you invest in some genuine Bavarian lederhosen or an authentic dirndl: not only will you look great, but you’ll also delight your hosts.
Sometimes, a few pictures say a thousand words, and rather than describe all of the horrific slutty dirndls and icky plastic lederhosen we see every year at the Oktoberfest, we thought we’d embed this video we made a few years back documenting the very worst and explaining how we can help. Because if you think you’ll look stupid wearing our clothes, you’ll look a hell of a site worse in this…