A couture comedy about generational healing…and awakening

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How to See the Film:

Send a donation to this link and we’ll send you a code
Become a $upporting $ubscriber on Substack and get access to Kristen’s library, aka “The Cave“
License a showing for your community – write for details!
See it in Oakland in 2025!

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Cuckoo clocks and baby clocks?

Savannah James is racing against time.

Orders are rushing in for her custom couture diversity dirndls. Friends, customers, and a reporter from Germany crowd into her basement studio—but her husband really wants have a talk about starting a family. Really?

Business has been booming since Zendaya wore her dress in Teen Vogue. Suddenly, Savannah’s idea of making ethnic mashups of traditional German party clothes is getting inner cities everywhere excited about Oktoberfest. But she knows more about pleats than business—and now she has to help fight Nazis, too?

Kristen Caven’s hilarious new “spiel show” is about work and creativity, language and secrets, horror stories and fashion fantasies, building positive futures out of complicated pasts, and the beauty of a circle of women.

Oh, and beer. Lots of beer.

Caven wrote this uniquely animated feature film as a stage play for a local Oktoberfest festival. 2020 forced a pivot to a virtual event…so she called in animator Ramona Zetino. Ten women (and one man) record this fast-moving story on whatever devices they had handy, and a talented neighbor even pitched in to create an original theme song. Although the characters are based on a fashion croquis, they are all cut from different cloth, representing the diversity of Germans in diaspora.

Host a Dirndl Diversity Fashion Show in your community!

Lederhosen Tee
Tshirt available in all sizes and shapes!

We now host a fashion show & tell annually…live!

Here’s the Facebook Page! | Reviews are coming in!

Writer, comic, and cultural creative Kristen Caven wrote The Dirndl Diaspora because she wanted to start a fashion trend inspired by Oakland. The granddaughter of German immigrants, Kristen studied German in college at Mills College when it was a Liberal Arts mecca. She and her mother, Dr. Louise Hart, write and publish books that heal the parenting wounds left by fascist (Nazi) ideologies.

Kristen teaches polka in her Zumba classes and keeps funny German words in the pockets of her pink dirndl. A creative force and champion of women’s voices, diversity and positivity, Kristen was the original Miss Art Deco and is the author or co-author of seven books. She is currently the California Writers Club Writer in Residence at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland and does lectures on Joaquin Miller.

*Cast & audience of the 2019 cold read of the play at Oaktoberfest*

Dirndl Day in the Dimond

We sponsor an annual fashion parade at Oaktoberfest!

The #DirndlDiversity prize!

Every year we give a $100 cash prize to a costume inspired by the movie. In 2020, Tina Riggs channeled Katrina Himmelstein with her gothic dirndl bedecked with skulls. In 2024, Marcella Rensi won it for her African mashup dirndl.