The Native Costumes of the Oberwallis: Tourist Gimmick or Tradition?

Abstract

HIGH ABOVE THE RHONE VALLEY, surrounded by snow-covered mountains and glaciers, lies the village of Saas-Fee. Five hundred seventy adults over twentyone years old, half of them women, live here. Sports of the area-winter and summer snow-skiing, skating, sleigh riding, swimming, and mountain climbing-were enjoyed by over seven thousand tourists last year. Yet only twentytwo years ago no road led to the village, only two paths, one for mules and one for people. Tourists came only during the very short summer season of six weeks in July and August. Rugged mountain farming, raising sheep, goats, a few cows, some barley and rye provided most of the daily needs of the people. The women helped shear the sheep, and they spun and wove the wool for their families' clothes, knitted socks and stockings, and rented the spare room to tourists in the summer. It was a hard life because all labor was manual. For instance, they had to cut the hay with scythes and sickles along the steep mountain sides and carry it down on their backs. Because most men were guides in the summer, the women did this work, as well as milking the cows and goats. Women wore plain, long, black skirts and jackets, dark aprons, and yellow or black head scarves. For Sundays and holidays, they had the brighter colored aprons and shawls around their shoulders. The most original item of their native costume, the Kreshuet, a small straw hat with a Krause or Kres (a black silk ribbon pleated into hundreds of tiny folds around the rim and a wide beautifully embroidered black or white silk or velvet ribbon pinned to the top), had all but disappeared. Julie Heierli writes in her book Die Volkstrachten von Bern, Freibueg und Wallis that during the inauguration of a new priest in Almagell (near Saas-Fee) in 1925, not a single woman wore a hat; all wore scarves. In the same year, at the Ascension Day celebration in Saas-Fee, only twelve of more than a hundred women had on hats, all of which were old, some from the I86o's.1 In contrast, in 1973, for the Corpus Christi procession