So if you read last weeks post, this one is awfully predictive: what does the Mennonite woman look like?
It’s all in the Dress
This one piece of clothing has a specific style and is in fact the best way to differentiate between an Amish and Menno woman. There are three main details to look for:
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The falden:
Falden is the Plautdietsch word for the evenly spaced paralleled vertical creases on the skirt portion of the dress. They run from the bottom of the skirt up to the waist band. The closer together they are, the “fancier” the dress. The Sunday dresses usually sport the seriously close creases. You won’t see these on the dress of Miss Amish.
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The Patterns
These are almost always of a floral sort. Much like the falden, the more ornate and flashy the pattern, the cooler the dress. Amish on the other hand stick almost exclusively to the solid patterns.
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The black apron
This thing has two purposes. The plain ones used during the week are to keep the dress clean during your daily choirs and extending the duration of one wear. The formal version is busted out on Sundays much like in the photo below. These clean pristine beauties are known to have a few falden themselves.
The head peices are a whole blog post unto themselves and I will delve into them at another time but for now, this is enough information to be able to pick a female Mennonite out of a crowd.
