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:

"Black Velvet Toreador Pants"

Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother Aurelia Plath on December 8, 1957, “I am sitting so cosily in my lovely black velvet toreador pants which I think are my favorite garment, my knee socks under them, and my little leopard slippers on, very warm and informal.” Sylvia’s velvet pants were leisure wear, a new post-war category of clothing a step up from pajamas. They might, if one was daring, be worn before guests and friends.

A most adaptable 1950s women’s leisure style, the toreador pant vanquished 1940s pleated trousers and struck Bermuda shorts dumb. Wearing skirts in public and at home as girls and women had to, Sylvia wore jeans when camping and in the countryside and as a housewife in London. Jeans then were work wear, or for roughing it. The fit was boxy and hems often worn rolled. The fitted toreador pant in finer fabric was for fun and the sass of showing off a figure.

Sylvia in jeans, Wyoming, 1959

On December 21, 1962, after goosey old ladies sent Sylvia money to buy new clothes, Sylvia wrote her mother from London that she bought along with new skirts and tops “black fake-fur toreador pants.” Certainly those were for leisure, the “fur” a bit exotic like the “tiger pants” that in Sylvia’s poem “Lesbos” were garb for a cheap adulteress.

Only five days later, December 26, Sylvia wanted still more toreador pants, this time a set, surely hoping a guest or guests might see and admire her in it. “Dear [Aunt] Dottie sent a $20 bill,” she wrote her mother, “& I shall treat myself to a green velvet set of Oriental toreador pants & top . . .”

Rather than imagine Sylvia’s toreador pants (I know of no photos), I sought photographic examples. 

 

In 1953, when the look was new, what made Marilyn Monroe’s velvet pants “toreador” was a high waist, close fit, flat front, and tapered leg. The sash too is “toreador.”

Monroe with designer William Travilla, 1953

Toreadors cropped at the ankle, called “cigarette pants,” were popular U.S. 1950s and 1960s casual wear, revived every few decades ever since. In this illustration they are worn as originally intended with bullfighters’ espadrilles. (photo from Etsy.com):

Choice of 12 colors, $64 made to order: https://tinyurl.com/msccn456

“Toreador” came to allude to length as well as fit. Below, see a black velvet calf-length “toreador” pant ensemble, not formal but made cocktail-party respectable with pearls, on a 1957 limited-edition Madame Alexander doll. “Evening pants” were then a new concept, limited to early-evening hours.

 

Here is a 1960s fake-fur for anyone inclined to sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb their hair:

Tiger pants plus!