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16 GERMAN LIFE • JUNE/JULY 2013

The dirndl is a staple of Oktoberfest the world over and instantly recognizable: a blouse, a bodice, a skirt, an apron. Like other traditional Trachten, such as Leder-hosen, the dirndl was once the everyday wear of work-ing folk in southern Germany and Austria and became popular around the end of the nineteenth century as an emblem of national heritage. The German-speaking Alps remain the center of the dirndl universe, with a few dirndl designers in Salzburg and many more in Munich, where – since 2011 – the glossy, high-fashion Dirndl Magazine has also been published. The spring/summer 2012 issue even featured wedding dirndls, bedecked with pearls and shimmering in shades of white. The United States, how-ever, also has its dirndl designers, who maintain a neces-sary balance between tradition and contemporary fashion.

One designer – Christel Cloyd – grew up near Han-nover, Germany. She moved with her husband to Kansas, but made regular trips to Germany and Austria to visit family. “Every time I went there,” she recalls, “someone wanted me to bring something back: sweaters, Lederho-sen, jackets. My friend said, ‘Instead of bringing some-thing, why not just import it and sell it?’” With that sug-gestion, Bergland Trachten was born in 1987.

Cloyd’s company imports and sells some items, such as men’s hats or jewelry, but Cloyd also imports fabrics from Germany and Austria, which she then turns into custom dirndls. She does make some dirndls without an advance order to sell off the rack at festivals, at a store in Wich-ita open only by appointment, or through her website http://www.berglandtrachten.com/. Most of the time,

DIRNDLS ON DEMAND

BY MARK MEIER

Today, Dirndl designers in the United States are both basking

in the traditional and stretching the boundaries for a look that is

unmistakably German.

UNLIKE MOST FASHION, THE ENDURING DIRNDL HAS

REMAINED, BASICALLY, UNTOUCHED BUT ERIKA NEUMAYER

IS FORGING A NEW PATH WITH HER FUN, YOUTHFUL

DESIGNS. COURTESY ERIKA NEUMAYER.

NEUMAYER USES FASHION DESIGN TO NEW LIFE TO ONE OF

THE TRADITIONAL SYMBOLS OF HER GERMAN HERITAGE. HERE

SHE ADDS THE FINISHING TOUCHES TO ONE OF HER CONTEM-

PORARY DIRNDLS. COURTESY ERIKA NEUMAYER.

17JUNE/JULY 2013 • GERMAN LIFE

however, Cloyd’s customers come to her with specific orders: “They tell us exactly what they want.” Eventu-ally, that is. Since Cloyd supplies dresses to choirs and dance groups, the members sometimes need a whole year to agree on a final design. Cloyd always works with the most recent fabrics and will not offer the same fabric to two different groups, however, thus ensuring that each organization has a unique look.

Once the design is finished, Cloyd and a team of several workers swing into action. In a typical year, she may pro-duce one hundred to one hundred fifty dirndls for adults and another forty or fifty for children. Most of her cus-tomers live in the Midwest or on the East Coast, such as the Alpenrose group in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. None-theless, Cloyd fills orders coast to coast, and has even been able to get an order one night and send it out the next morning. Customers seem thrilled by their dirndls’ arrival. Cloyd quotes from a recent e-mail: “First let me say that I am very impressed with everything! The Mieder with pin tucking is gorgeous!”

Such feedback, frequently accompanied with pictures, “is definitely one of the highlights of our business” for Cloyd. Another highlight is “I can do it whenever I want; I can work at my own pace.” Granted, September to Christmas is exceptionally busy, but Cloyd still enjoys the business.

North of Cloyd, Erika Neumayer was born in Chicago the year before Cloyd began Bergland Trachten. Neu-mayer grew up as a member of the American Aid Soci-ety for German Descendants and began dancing with the group in high school, which meant wearing the requisite dirndl. Neumayer went to Dominican University to study fashion and also spent a summer studying in Paris. She began to realize that “the United States dirndl market could use a little lift. Europe was way ahead in terms of

fashion for dirndls.”Neumayer won awards for a collection based on

Donauschwaben dresses, and after graduation, worked a few nights a week in a German restaurant and set up a fashion shop, Rare, in her parents’ dining room in 2010. “The dining room table is my cutting board,” she says, “and I emptied out the China cabinet and it now holds all my materials.” The day we spoke, however, she and her dad were going over to refurbish the floors of a space that is now her studio at 5051 North Lincoln Avenue in Chi-cago. (Neumayer mainly takes orders through her website http://erikaneumayer.com/).

Neumayer was drawn to dirndls because of her heritage and because she likes “to be creative and really push the boundaries. In the fashion world, so much has already been done. With dirndls, though, the style is so far back in time, not a lot has been done. I like to mix fabrics and colors. It’s fun.” She quickly began to produce menswear, too, in response to demand.

Neumayer’s collections comprise twelve to fifteen piec-es, of which she may make only ten of any piece, meaning “if you buy something, you know only ten other people in the United States are walking around with it.” The col-lections run the array from the bright primary colors and polka dots and zebra stripes of “Sunkissed” to the dark-er shades and plaids of her fall/winter 2012 collection “Beautiful, Dark Days,” inspired, Neumayer explains, by “listening to lots of grunge.” The 1990s musical theme carries through to the names of individual items, such as the “Smells Like Teen Spirit Dirndl” or “Black Hole Sun Dirndl,” which pale women model in front of an old building with peeling paint and tires in the foreground. Her Facebook page, meanwhile, hints of an Alice in Won-derland theme for spring/summer 2013.

REGARDLESS OF THE AGE,

A DIRNDL MAKES A DISTINCTIVE

FASHION STATEMENT.

COURTESY CHRISTEL CLOYD.

THOSE SEEKING TRADITION-

AL DESIGN AND UNIQUE

FABRICS TURN TO CHRIS-

TEL CLOYD OF BERGLAND

TRACHTEN. CHRISTEL TAKES

PRIDE IN SOURCING HER

FABRIC SELECTIONS FROM

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.

COURTESY CHRISTEL CLOYD.

18 GERMAN LIFE • JUNE/JULY 2013

Explaining yourself as an haute-couture dirndl designer may provoke some confused faces, but Neumayer relishes the mix. “I can stay in touch with the fashion world, but I can also have a bear in my fashion shoots.” She keeps up with the major fashion shows in Paris and New York as well as trends in Munich. “But of course,” she adds, “I have my own ideas and keep up with what’s going on in the United States. Ninety-nine percent of my customers are American.” Neumayer describes her dress buyers typi-cally as women “who have a dirndl closet like I do, but want something fresh. They want to be fashion forward but also want to hang onto their German heritage.” The men who wear her shirts likewise have an equal interest in tradition and innovation.

Being based in the United States helps cut down on the competition for Neumayer, but as a one-woman shop with only occasional interns, she still struggles to stay on top of everything. She attends festivals and trade shows, takes and fills orders, plans new collections, and keeps ac-tive on social media. She looks forward to the day when she is not doing it all by herself and can have a few people

working with her. Yet building the business is much like Neumayer’s least favorite task, making patterns and get-ting the fit right on a new pattern. “It’s always a challenge and can be really tedious. Creating new shapes for the human body is always difficult.”

Nonetheless, with Cloyd and Neumayer, through more fun than toil, the familiar dirndl keeps finding new shapes and figures to drape. GL

Like the Look?If you are in the market for a Trachten, the following businesses might just have what you are looking for:

Bergland Trachten547 E. Grand AvenueSte. 5, P.O. Box 52Haysville, KS 67060Telephone: 1-888-524-0052 or 316-524-0019www.berglandtrachten.com

Ernst Licht347 Main StreetOley, PA 19547Telephone: 610-987-3298 or 1-800-776-3298

German WearTelephone: 888-743-6296www.germanwear.com

Rare5051 N. Lincoln AvenueChicago, IL 60625Telephone: 312-806-5099www.erikaneumayer.com

BY POPULAR DEMAND,

RARE’S LINE OF CLOTHING

NOW ALSO INCLUDES

CLOTHING CHOICES

FOR MEN. COURTESY

ERIKA NEUMAYER.

ERIKA NEUMAYER DESIGNS FOR

WOMEN WHO,

“HAVE A DIRNDL CLOSET

LIKE I DO, BUT WANT

SOMETHING FRESH…”

COURTESY ERIKA NEUMAYER.

19JUNE/JULY 2013 • GERMAN LIFE

www.ernstlicht.com610 987 9496

Ladies Clothing

ShopOktoberfestNow! !

Mens Clothing

Music

Beer Steins

Jewelry

Hats and Feathers

www.raredirndl.comby erika neumayer

New Spring 2013 Collection!

Down the Rabbit Hole

9April/MAy 2013 • german life

The acculturation of the For-ty-Eighters: Lessons for today’s immigrants.

Biographical sketches of Forty-Eighters. German-American Immigration Experience.Low German in America.How would widely held Turner be-

liefs mesh with recent developments in the United States, such as the role of government versus the rights of the individual, public education ver-sus private religious beliefs, or public health care programs?

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The conference is funded through generous donations from Deutsche Welle and a private individual. Ad-ditional support is provided by the Kleinfeld Lecture/Event Series at Wartburg College.

More information about the con-ference as it becomes available can be found at the conference website: www.wartburg.edu/1848.

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Continued on page 29

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InBrief.indd 9 2/21/13 9:03 AM

In the Beginning…There was Ernst Licht

Ernst Licht Embroidery and Imports is the oldest supplier of Dirndls and other Trachten and traditional Ger-man goods in the US. Founded by the German emigrant Ernst Licht, the company has an extensive online catalog (www.ernstlicht.com) and print catalogue as well as a store in Oley, Pennsylvania, about 55 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The store’s team of tailors produces and customizes Dirndls with materials from Germany and can offer quan-tity discounts. In 1983, the entire Oley Township was designated a Na-tional Historic District to preserve the agricultural nature of the area as well as many of the eighteenth-cen-tury Pennsylvania Dutch buildings and other historic architecture.

COURTESY ERIKA NEUMAYER.