The Lederhosen boom

SANKT EMMERAMSMÜHLE, a restaurant and beer garden tucked into the lush greenery of Munich, features a braying donkey within earshot and swanky sports cars parading by. It goes without saying that its staff wear traditional Bavarian garb, called Tracht. For the men that means lavishly embroidered Lederhosen, short or knee-length breeches made of leather, and for the women a brightly coloured Dirndl consisting of a tight bodice, a blouse with puffy sleeves, a full skirt and an apron. Perhaps more surprisingly, most patrons wear it, too.

The many other beer gardens in the area present much the same sight. So do wedding parties, dinners, concerts and galas. Teenage boys have been spotted sporting their Lederhosen at the disco.

It was not always so and reflects a revival that has now been going on for about half a decade, says Hans Köhl of the Salzburger Heimatwerk, an Austrian organisation that supports local customs. Tracht is now worn by the rich, the famous, and hoi polloi alike. Cognoscenti delight in the allegedly vast stylistic differences between, say, a Lederhose from Altaussee and one from Grundlsee, two Styrian lakes less than 10km (6.2 miles) apart (something to do with the embroidery, apparently). Meanwhile, less discriminating tourists are dropped by the busload into outlets to get kitted out for the Oktoberfest, a beer festival. Tracht has never been so common and cosmopolitan—even cool. Increasingly, it is the Alpine answer to American cowboy hats or Chinese qipao (their sheath-like, high-necked dress).

Leather shorts with a front flap and embroidery, descendants of the breeches once worn all over Europe, became common in Alpine lands during the 18th century. Ever since, they have ridden the roller-coaster of the Zeitgeist. During the 19th century they rose with the Romantic movement, then sank to the status of low-class work clothes. In the 20th century the Nazis co-opted them. After the war they survived in conservative circles but fell out of favour in the wider population, enamoured by then of blue jeans, the dress of the Allied victors.

During the 1990s, however, Lederhosen and Dirndl surged back as part of a new trend that combined hearty local patriotism with cutting-edge modernity. Roman Herzog, a former president of Germany, captured the synthesis in the phrase “laptops and Lederhosen”. The financial and euro crises, says Mr Köhl, helped Tracht yet more, because uncertainty always makes people yearn for tradition. And although patriotism remains psychologically complex in Germany, regional pride as expressed in Tracht is free of suspicion. Like Scots with their kilts, Germans can don their Lederhosen and still be good Europeans.