THE AMISH
"It's for covering my tradition you know?"
6.09.2018
flight to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Researchtrip to the Amish
Before I started my trip to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I had many thoughts and also a lot of prejudice about the Amish in mind. Do the Amish, or Plain People, really live so secluded, far from any reality familiar to us?
Is everything immortalized in the New Testament taken literally by the Amish? And are the gender roles still as strictly distributed as they were in the 17th century? All of this and much more flew around in my head as i entered the plane to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
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The Amish constantly live with the desire for simplicity and in a God-fearing isolation from an increasingly mainstream developing America. It is precisely this yearning for simplicity and the search for a frame that more and more people feel everyday. Especially among young people of my generation. Any excess, may it be in the fashion industry or food, is plaguing more and more people. Which gifts of modernity do we accept and which do we reject? For the Amish it is always the fine line between modernity and tradition and which new codes develop from it. My story is told from the point of view of young adults during "Rumspringa" time. Based on this story, topics such as minimalism and outburst, sustainability and mainstream culture, self-fulfillment and identity development are addressed. To deal with people who are no subjects to the dictates of the fashion world, was extremely exciting for this project.
RESEARCH
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the only
true thing
RUMSPRINGA
coming of ages
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Nowadays, it is more and more about specialization, social activities, diversity of lifestyles and above all individualism, which is understood completely different when it comes to the Amish than in our society. Above all, one thing is the most important feature of modernity for us: our ability to choose. Our ability to choose freely from lifestyle to food, from religion to our hobbies. Unlike the Amish, we always have the free choice to do what we like most. For us, it is modern life. For the Amish, the constant encounter with modernity is a complex struggle with their values. Again and again it must be weighed which elements of our modern world are adopted to survive, but always without violating the religious traditions.
MODERN OR NOT MODERN?
ANTI FASHION
MODESTY
REJECTING
MAINSTREAM
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TRADITION IS BEING
WORSHIPPED
HOMEBOUND
SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD
People are social beings with ties to tribes, ethnic groups, family, friends, teams, neighborhoods and nations. Each of our tribes has its identity symbols that distinguish them from others. National flags, company logos, jerseys and job uniforms remind members and non-members of who is in the team and who is not. Our teams have rules for membership and rules for the game. Amish teams have their own rules and garments that are supposed to show their moral order. The unmistakable clothing is a benchmark against which the symbolic distance to other groups can be measured. Clothes are the salient symbol of Amish identity. Without simple garb, the ethnic identity of an Amish person would disappear. Even among the Amish, clothing displays important clues to status. The clothing of the Amish creates a cultural gap that encloses itself and separates it from the outside world. Members of the community become more interconnected and a common identity emerges. The Amish hereby oppose a cultural symbol: The simple clothes not only reject designer labels, but also the values of consumer culture.
GROWING UP AMISH
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Within the Amish community, the individual renounces the right to use clothing as a tool of self-expression. Clothing is not only a tool of social control, but an ecclesiastical tradition legitimated by Bible principles. Clothing reflects biblical values such as humility, modesty, self-denial, simplicity and separation from the world. The clothes should be neat, simple and cover the body. A man on my trip told me: " It's our duty to keep it simple, just as it is the duty of a policeman to wear his uniform."
CHILDISH
ESCAPE
"missing the informal childhood and its individuality"
OVERSIZED CLOTHES
IDENTITY DOESN'T FIT
For a woman in the Amish community, the bonnet is an important part of their daily uniform. A headgear is a symbol. It symbolizes belonging and community. In the culture of mainstream America, where hyper individualism is the religion of time, the meaning of the symbol of cover is lost. The bonnet remains one of the most important symbols of an Amish woman. The bonnet means the step into the adult world. Away from childlike freedom and into a dutiful and strictly regulated life.
QUILTS
For many, Amish quilts are an important part of American culture. At a time when nearly every textile product sold in America is manufactured in a shop in Asia, these Amish quilts are made individually in American households. Although the quilts from North America are also very exciting for art collectors, they have a special significance in the Amish community. Quilts are made to mark marriages and births in the community and are therefore made with incredible patience for detail.
RUMSPRINGA.
The word for a significant period of life of Amish teenagers. "Rhumspringe". Amish adolescents grow up in a culture where tradition is revered and everyday life is governed by rules. How can the search for identity happen in such environment? The Rumspringa period starts at the age of 16 and lasts until the age of 21 at baptism. This period of time is a psychological, religious and social challenge. Exploring the english world and suddenly having the opportunity to do everything you could not even have imagined before, would not be said twice to many young people in mainstream American culture. Unlike Amish, who come into contact with radical traditions as young children, go to church at least twice a week, work every day at their parents' farm, and have a long prayer before dinner.
THE AMERICAN DREAM?
Not necessarily if you're born into an Amish family. Nevertheless, many young people use this time to get to know each other better and get in touch with non Amish. Huge parties of more than 300 Amish and non-Amish are organized on Facebook, lots of alcohol and drugs play a role.
For the Amish adolescents, this opens up a whole new world to an individuality that is suddenly not far away. The escape into another world. It opens up worlds in which you can experiment with different clothing styles, may it be the college jacket with thick, colorful patches, or the colorful Nike sneaker of the non-Amish friend who is just going to college. To find one's self also means testing out boundaries without constraints and rules of the community. Without guidelines how to dress. It's not always easy to grow up in a world where a lot happens at the same time. Constant renewal, technical progress, political upheaval, war and terror and yet the possibility to do anything you want. For a young Amish, this is a challenge. Where does this young adult find support? Is it the memories of childhood in the rural community? The childish informality? The home in rural Lancaster? What shapes a teenager on his way to a grown up?
WORK PROCESS
FITTING
SKETCHES
LOOKS
Special thanks to Professor Sibylle Klose, Professor Markus Müller & Max Niemann.