From music, to cinema, to fashion: it’s Cowboy mania
It’s a fact: cowboy fashion is back with a vengeance not seen since the days when Madonna brought it back into fashion with the emblematic Stetson hats sported in the unforgettable Music album videos or since the cinematic successes of Brokeback Mountain, when Ang Lee‘s controversial film brought back sheepskins and Texan boots. The cowboy-core style is among us again and has invaded, as it often does, the worlds of fashion, music and costume.
Abandoning hip-hop and urban sounds, the multi-award winning star Beyoncè was the first to anticipate the trend, displacing fans with her latest album “Cowboy Carter“, driven by the hit “Texas Hold ‘Em”, where she manages to unite two seemingly polar opposites cultures such as black and country.
The cowboy-core aesthetic is so clear and recognisable in its references that it has managed to cross two centuries of history while remaining faithful to its own canons and, despite moral controversies, has always exerted a mysterious fascination even towards the worlds furthest away from it.
In the beginning, it was the first settlers of the West who abandoned the western clothes of the American East Coast to adapt them to the temperatures and context of the new West: also inspired by Native American customs and influenced by the customs of neighbouring Mexico. Boots, hat, Navajo concho belt and bandana to protect from the dust are just some of the references of this mythical uniform to which, over time, the ever-present Levi’s jeans were added.
A look that entered into myth thanks to the successes of the western films of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne and the country music that still today is an industry that mobilises followers and fans from every corner of America and beyond. A uniform as beloved as it is desecrated: how can we forget the stage dresses of Elton John, Cher, Dolly Parton or the irreverent ones of the Village People. Even the world of cinema seems to have fallen back in love with this myth, reinterpreting it under a new key, as the recent films by Almodovar and Jane Campion or the acclaimed Yellowstone series with a Kevin Kostner in a state of grace well illustrate.
No longer described as heroic macho horsemen but told in their complexity, the cowboys are finally humanised and revisited in their most interesting nuances: prisoners of roles and moral ambiguities, afflicted by fears and weaknesses. It is in this new context that Ethan Coen‘s latest masterpiece, Drive-Away Dolls, fits, with its scandalous scene in which Margaret Qualley shows up completely nude wearing only a pair of Texan boots, recalling another iconic moment in the cult hit Thelma & Louise where, over three decades ago, a then unknown Brad Pitt was consecrated to Hollywood Olympus thanks to a nude barely covered by the same headgear.
In this new scenario, fashion has certainly not been idle and, starting this autumn, Pharrell Williams‘ acclaimed fashion show will arrive in Louis Vuitton boutiques, including the one in Galleria Cavour in Bologna. Reinterpreted in a glamorous way with leather ties, fringes, blousons and shearling jackets, the cowboy aesthetic will be ready to cross new boundaries and new keys of interpretation for what seems to be a fashion that always seduces: today as then.
Ph: Detroit Publishing Co., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons – This photo is an excerpt of the original