lederhosen

The history of wearing animal hide for pants goes back over 5300 years. It was discovered when they found Otzi the Iceman, a frozen mummy who was found near the Alps in 1991. The mummy was said to be 5300 years old. The lederhosen commonly known today is traditionally a pair of pants of deer or chamois skin and are a soft brown color. They my be either long or short, but the endings are above the knee, below the ankles, or go all the way down to the ankles. Today, colors May range from black, different shades of brown, tan or grey. They usually have two types of suspenders, the suspenders can be either shaped in a "V" style or an "H" style. They will often have some type of colorful embroidery pattern on the cross piece. Lederhosen was worn traditionally in the 1700s' in Europe. It was common across Europe for peasants to wear leather pants for farm work, horse riding and hunting. It was the Bavarians who invented the drop down flap at the front, which are now known as suspenders. The French it "a' la Bavaroise", meaning "the Bavarian style", in that time period, Europe's aristocracy would dress up like peasants for fun. That is when lederhosen became popular across all types of society, lederhosen fell out of fashion in the 1800's, but Joseph Vogil led a revival in 1883, when he and his friends got together to protest the "fall or decline of Bavarian values." They started the Tracht preservation society. They started wearing their short length lederhosen to church services. This happened in the town of Bayerischzell, Germany. The priests were vary upset about this attire and condemned the shorts as being indecent and tried to have them banned. Bavarian King Ludwig II said he was a fan of the lederhosen. Then farmers and aristocrats started wearing lederhosen again. Today, in Germany, the lederhosen is usually worn for beer festivals like Oktoberfest and other events. Some towns with very traditional cultures such as Garmisch-Paitenkeichen, they will wear lederhosen everyday.