By Bernhard Roetzel.
I was pretty convinced that Permanent Style readers wouldn’t need an explanation of the term ‘Loden’. Still, I wondered whether a very English retailer like Cordings felt the need to define the word, so I searched it their website.
I found 27 products made of Loden there, including the most famous garment made in the fabric, the Hubertus coat (above). The ‘style description’ describes the fabric as “a tightly woven wool which is then felted to give it a sturdy yet supple handle, naturally warm and water resistant”.
It is correct that Loden is a woven material, traditionally of woollen yarn. It is not felted though, it is fulled. The difference between felting and fulling, felt and Loden is important. Felt is created by fulling wool fibres in hot water, before weaving them. Fulling woollen fabric that has already been woven results in Loden.
Fulling basically means soaking woollen cloth in hot water and soap, before someone pounds and wrings the cloth with his hands or stamps it with his feet. The result is that the surface of the fabric becomes denser, the pattern of the weave disappears, and both wind and water are kept outside.
(Below: old and then modern fulling processes)
It is unknown when and where fulling was invented and first used to finish fabrics. By the Middle Ages it was already well known in northern and middle Europe. Soon after the process started to be mechanised with the introduction of water-powered fulling-mills. There the fabrics were pounded with wooden hammers to create the desired result.
In the Alps fulling mills have been around approximately since the 16th century. Peasants usually spun the fibres of their sheep at home, the fabrics were woven on site by travelling weavers, and the peasants then carried their cloth to a local fulling mill, where the Loden was created.
In the middle of the 19th century Loden started to be produced on a bigger scale due to its growing popularity. In the same way Queen Victoria made tartans and tweeds popular in England, Austrian royalty started a fashion for country wear made of Loden in their empire, and then in neighbouring Germany.
The original Loden fabric was made of wool from the sheep living in the mountain regions. Their hair was fairly coarse, which meant a similarly coarse type of Loden. During the first half of the 20th century weavers started adding merino, cashmere or Angora to create softer, lighter or luxurious variations. More recently a small percentage of synthetic fibre has often been added, to make the fabric more water repellent and to lower the cost.
Green Loden is still widely worn for the huntsman and forester in Germany and Austria (below), even though modern hunting clothes made of man-made fibres are more popular. For everyday hunting, cheaper Loden fabrics are usually used. Loden in general has the advantage for the huntsman of being noiseless.
Loden comes in many colours nowadays. Originally grey, green and brown were the most common. The most famous grey is the Schladminger type (second image below), which is a mix of different shades of grey and black. Internationally green remains the colour most people think of, largely because of the popularity of the green Hubertus coat.
The original Loden is woven in Austria and Germany (as the real tweed comes from Scotland or Ireland, even though ‘tweeds’ are also woven in Spain and Italy). All of the weavers are pretty small, most of them are old, and many are still family owned.
Loden has become a niche product so these weavers usually sell their fabrics to makers and tailors all around the world. The best known are:
I mentioned earlier that the Hubertus coat is sold in Cordings. This says something about the standing of the coat in England. Despite having continental origins, it is accepted as a classic of the English gentleman’s wardrobe.
Probably due to the German relations of the Windsors, the Hubertus was worn by some senior members of the Royal Family in the 1970s-1990s. The late Duke of Edinburgh was frequently seen in a Hubertus coat. The Duke of Kent also wears it although less frequently now. (All images below.)
In 1980 Lady Diana Spencer was snapped wearing a green Hubertus coat over her evening dress by the Royal photographer Jane Fincher, when the Princess-to-be arrived at The Ritz for Princes Margaret’s 50th birthday party.
British makers of coats and countrywear use Loden as a change from the usual British overcoatings. Loden is very similar to tweed in the way it performs but it offers a different feel and look. Chrysalis and Private White VC both use Loden for field coats and overcoats too, giving it an interesting twist.
In Italy, Spain, France and Switzerland the Hubertus is also rather popular among classically dressed gentlemen. In northern Italy you actually see more green Loden coats in winter than you do in Germany. On my travels I’ve seen it in Florence, Venice, Milano and Bergamo, worn mainly by elderly gentlemen (below). It is also popular with vintage fans in Italy, models made by Schneider’s from Salzburg being particularly sought after.
The Hubertus coat traditionally comes with a deep inverted pleat at the back for ease of movement (originally for shooting). It also has underarm vents for ventilation, leather football buttons and pockets with an inside opening (like on some raincoats) that allow access to the pockets of your trousers or jacket.
There is no maker or retailer who can claim to offer the original Hubertus. Lodenfrey in Munich would probably object because they were the first to weave a truly water-repellent Loden in 1872, the so called Strichloden.
The outside of that fabric is finished using thistles, a technique still used today. Today Strichloden is woven by several mills, typically in a mix of 80% wool and 20% alpaca.
Lodenfrey sold Hubertus coats made of their own Strichloden internationally. They used to have mills in Germany and their own coat factory in Munich, but those days are long gone.
Schneider’s in Salzburg was perhaps even more renowned, both in Austria and Germany and internationally but the company went bankrupt in 2023. Schneider’s used to make their coats in Austria until they moved the production to middle Europe.
Today Plankl in Vienna is maybe the best source for a well made and authentic Hubertus coat. You can buy off-the-rack but they will also adapt personal measurements. I assume they have their own production in Austria. Eduard Meier in Munich also stocks very well made Loden coats.
For me the Hubertus is best seen as a slightly more unusual version of a covert coat, and equally versatile (also originally a piece of country clothing). You can wear it as town coat with a grey or navy business suit. It can be worn at the weekend over a sports jacket and flannels or corduroys. And you can wear the Hubertus with sportswear, for example jeans and a chunky sweater.
Outside the Hubertus style there two other types of Loden coat worth looking at: the shorter Loden Stutzer and the Lodenkotze or Wetterfleck (below). The latter style is a kind of cape or cloak that is made with the same type of collar as the Hubertus. It has vents for the arms and usually two long panels of fabric that allow you to keep the ‘wetterfleck’ from flying away.
That’s traditionally worn over your backpack when it rains. Originally made for the huntsman, it’s now also worn as an alternative to the Hubertus coat and for hiking in the mountains. It protects from drizzle and wind, and can be easily be rolled up and carried in the backpack.
As the original Loden is rather coarse, heavy and warm, weavers nowadays mainly make lighter, softer and luxurious variations. Sometimes they cross the line into flannel which is similar. Loden is distinct in its more or less fulled surface; if you don’t finish it this way you will get a kind of flannel.
Leichtfried thus sells lots of its fine-merino Loden as a flannel. You can find it as an overcoat in the range of the German outfitter Anton Meyer, or as trousers at Scavini in Paris.
My personal experience with Loden started in childhood, because my father used to wear a green unlined Hubertus coat made of a double-faced Loden. When I was 15 or 16 my grandmother bought me my first Loden coat in a department store. It was navy but cut in the traditional Hubertus style.
In my twenties and thirties I was totally focused on English greatcoats. But when I found out that some of the best dressed members of the English Royal family regularly showed up in Hubertus coats I started wearing the green Loden coat that my father had given me in the meantime.
About 15 years ago I started looking for vintage Loden coats in second-hand shops and on eBay. My favourite brand became Salko, an Austrian maker that had gone out of business. I recommend looking for the brand online. I own two coats from Salko now and while I’ve never had one from Lodenfrey, I have owned two from Schneider’s (above).
I have always envied the Brits because they can find loads of vintage suits and greatcoats in their neighbourhood (I hunted for clothes in Oxfam and Sue Ryder shops in London in the 1980s myself). But the advantage of living in continental Europe is that you can find good Loden coats everywhere. Every time I go to Florence or Milan I could come back with at least one good vintage Loden, if I only had space in my luggage.
NB: Styling images above and below chosen by the PS team rather than Bernhard, for reference in comments/questions
