A Loden Glossary

Loden comes with a vocabulary that never crossed into English, which is a good part of why so much of what gets written about it in English is wrong. Half the words below describe things no English garment does. The other half describe things English garments do, badly.

Jump to: Alpine sleeve · Boiled wool · Covert coat · Doubleface loden · Fulling · Hubertus · Inverness · Janker · Loden · Lodenkotze · Merino loden · Saddle · Schladminger · Strichloden · Stutzer · Trachten · Walkjanker · Wetterfleck

Alpine sleeve

A practical feature used by alpine hunters and herdsman who had to climb up steep mountains. It is an opening under the armpit that serves two purposes. First, it improves the range of movement, enabling one to reach straight up unhindered when climbing. Second it ventilates the coat. When worn hiking up a steep mountain the added ventilation is wonderful. Nobody notices it until they have lived with one, and then they want it on everything. See Hubertus.

Boiled wool

Technically a misnomer because the water is never boiling merely warm around 30 degrees celsius. Refers to knitted wool, shrunk on purpose through a fulling process until the stitches close up and the cut edges stop fraying. In German it's simply referred to as 'walk', pronounced 'valk' and the typical garment made from it is a janker, or short jacket, so it's called a 'walkjanker'. Some jackets are cut & sewn before fulling which is risky because the size it comes out after fulling is tricky to predict but the seams disappear which is nice. Other jackets are cut and sewn with pre-shrunk knit wool, which makes sizing more predictable. It's like a cousin of loden just knit rather than woven. Gottstein is a world renowned supplier of boiled wool whose fabric we've used, and we carry their felted slippers.

Covert coat

An English single-breasted topcoat in covert cloth, usually fawn, with rows of stitching at the cuff and hem. Here because it is the nearest English cousin to the Hubertus: a coat built for the country that was quietly allowed into town.

Doubleface loden

Loden woven with a different face on each side, usually a check on the inside. The cloth lines itself. Exactly the solution you arrive at when a lining is a luxury and the cloth is not, and it wears far better than any lining ever did.

Fulling (German: Walken)

The wet finishing process that creates Loden fabric. loosely woven cloth made with carded yarn goes into warm water with a little soap and is agitated until the fibers give up and lock into each other. The weave closes, the surface densifies, and the cloth comes out between a third to two thirds of the size it went in. One of our suppliers, Loden Steiner in Mandling, still uses an old machine called a 'Hammerwalker' that pounds the fabric with two giant wooden hammers.

This is not felting. Felt is matted from loose wool that was never woven into anything. Loden is woven first, from carded yarn, and fulled afterwards. Shops selling loden get this wrong constantly. It is not pedantry: it is the difference between a cloth with a structure and a cloth without one.

Hubertus

The classic Austrian loden coat, named for Saint Hubert, who according to the story gave up hunting after a stag turned around with a crucifix between its antlers, and was then made the patron saint of hunters. Identified by a deep inverted pleat down the back, alpine sleeves, pocket slits that reach through to the trouser pocket, leather buttons and a doubled saddle over the shoulders. Traditionally unlined. The full guide is here.

Inverness

A coat with a cape across the shoulders, either instead of sleeves or over them. Scottish, and the thing Sherlock Holmes is always drawn in, which is why ours is called the Holmes. The Austrian relative is the Wetterfleck.

Janker

The Alpine jacket. Short, square-cut, standing collar or none at all, made in loden, boiled wool or linen. Not a special-occasion garment: it is what a man in Styria puts on to go and have lunch.

Loden

A woven wool cloth, fulled until it is dense enough to turn wind and shed rain with no coating, no membrane and no chemistry. Originally from the coarse wool of Alpine mountain sheep, which Tyrolean peasants were once permitted by imperial decree to wear, along with linen and leather, and not much else. The traditional colors were gray melange, green and brown.

It is also completely silent. That is not a romantic detail, it is the reason hunters wanted it.

Lodenkotze

A loden cape. It goes over a rucksack, which a coat with sleeves cannot do. Still the correct answer to heavy rain if you are carrying anything on your back, and still faintly magnificent.

Merino loden

Loden woven from merino instead of mountain-sheep wool. Finer, lighter, softer against the neck. A relatively modern idea: merino, cashmere and angora only arrived in loden in the early twentieth century. You trade some of the original's brute hardiness for a cloth you can wear over a suit without thinking about it.

Saddle

The doubled layer of cloth across the shoulders, chest and upper back of a traditional loden coat. It sits precisely where rain lands and stays. The least glamorous feature of the whole garment and most of the reason the old ones are still walking around.

Schladminger

A heavy loden out of Schladming, in Styria. The classic Schladminger gray is not a dye: it is gray and black fibers spun together, a melange, which is why it has a depth that flat gray cannot manage and why it never goes chalky with age.

Strichloden

Water-repellent loden with a raised, directional nap, so rain runs off it one way. Developed by Lodenfrey in Munich in 1872, and the nap traditionally raised with dried thistle heads, which remain the best tool anyone has found for the job. Modern versions run around four parts wool to one part alpaca.

Stutzer (Loden Stutzer)

A short loden coat, cut above the knee. Same cloth, often the same details as a Hubertus, in a length that makes more sense for driving, cycling, and anyone who has ever been swamped by a full-length coat.

Trachten

Austrian and Bavarian traditional dress, and the whole family of clothing that came out of it. Not costume. People wear it to work.

Walkjanker

A Janker in boiled wool. Because the wool is matted rather than woven, the edges can be left raw and the jacket needs no lining at all. Warm, close to indestructible, and the most everyday thing in the Alpine wardrobe.

Wetterfleck

The Austrian weather cape: Hubertus collar, vents for the arms, two long panels front and back. Built to go over a rucksack in rain, which is why it belonged to hunters and now belongs to hikers. Also a Lodenkotze.

Something missing, or something here you would define differently? Write and tell us.