The Clothes of Tyrol

Card with real textile samples, Franz M. Rhomberg textile company, Austria, 1930s

 New mother Sylvia Plath started sewing clothes for her daughter Frieda. On November 6, 1960, Sylvia wrote her mother that looking at dress patterns she "drooled at a whole series of 'Tyrol' outfits--black bodices, full bright-colored skirts and white blouses" for her little girl. Why? Most of the Tyrolean Alps are in Austria, and Sylvia was assuring her mother that she was mindful of their Austrian heritage.

The Tyrolean folk outfit for women is called a "dirndl." As an international fashion trend it started in Salzburg in the 1930s, promoted throughout the Reich by Chancellor Hitler, who wanted Hitler Youth wearing folk dress as their uniform. The company Lanz of Salzburg still sells Tyrolean-styled women's nightwear in its canonical print of stripes, hearts, and flowers. To prod urban women away from Paris fashions toward Tyrolean chic, here's an upscaled design by Rhomberg of Innsbruck, 1935:

The horses are a specific Tyrolean breed.

The concept of the assertively printed dress with dirndl details such as puffed sleeves and taut midriff, but all in one piece, caught on as couture. Here's a U.S. pattern (Butterick, 1938), and how it played out in real life:

"Tyrolean" lost its cachet during World War II, but the dirndl silhouette persisted as a gender marker, specifically ultra-femininity. Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar donned a dirndl skirt to pretend she was the mindless "Elly Higginbottom." Brigitte Bardot in the '50s was costumed in dirndls that played up her bust. U.S. TV housewife and uber-Mom "June Cleaver" in 1960 wore shirtwaists: the power dirndl, man-tailored on top.

TV homemaker "June Cleaver" confronts her husband, 1960

Colorful, "feminine" print fabrics outlasted the dirndl's demanding shape: Your own family photos will show matronly types wearing yoked and belted multi-colored floral and geometric print dresses far into the 1970s. The "dress with purple cartwheels on it" worn by Esther Greenwood's mother on a visit to the hospital I do not doubt was Aurelia Plath's real dress.

Yet how is it that the Tyrolean women's costume looks so much like the Bavarian, German, Swiss, Swedish, Czech, Polish, Danish, and other European national costumes?

That's because the idea of a "national" or "traditional" costume was imposed: It's 19th-century Romantic nationalism compressed to images of robust and rosy Aryan peasant folk who would never dream of overthrowing their governments. Having a "national costume" minimized a nation's minorities and subgroups who dressed otherwise. Hitler knew that. So did Mao.

Younger women such as Sylvia drew back from anything to do with Central European styling, disdaining a 1950s fad for polka dots and favoring for themselves Anglophilic woolen plaids and tweeds, Chanel-inspired suits, sheaths, pencil skirts and American denim. As more women worked outside the home, the dirndl devolved into a style for barmaids and toddler girls. Little Frieda in 1962 looks sweet:

Did Sylvia Plath Look Like Her Mother? You Decide

Only once have I heard "She looks like Aurelia," and the speaker sounded horrified. Never have I read or heard any more about the mother-daughter resemblance.

Aurelia was 19 in the photo above, and Sylvia Plath was 20. Sylvia hated the above image of herself, which she scissored from its context, but 1) it is not as horrid as she said and 2) it was the only comparable photo, showing Sylvia close in age, facing the camera, and unsmiling. In Aurelia's time there was no cultural mandate to smile for every photo.

Both women were four or five inches taller than average, with sturdy frames. They wore each other's clothes.

Looking Austrian and Polish as all getout.

So what do you say, did Sylvia look like her mother? In photos taken later, Sylvia's face a bit lived-in, I think so, except Sylvia had that "lemony" look indicating Eastern European blood: her father's. Worshipful authors tend to cleanse Sylvia of any but her father's German heritage (they don't like to say "Prussian" because they aren't sure what it is) and favor photos of her doing very white-American ritual activities: bridesmaid; tanning; Yellowstone; aboard a luxury liner. Bitter Fame, of course, tried to show Sylvia as unappealing.

Yes, Plath fans play politics with images. I am doing it by showing young Aurelia and young Sylvia side by side. Have you ever seen them this way? Those with stock in Sylvia Plath have created or emphasized distance between them -- as if the apple fell so far from the tree that it was the tree's fault, or the apple created itself. Mother and daughter were close. Both women said they were.

Happy birthday, Aurelia (April 26). On this page you are reunited with your girl.