Why Fashion Doesn’t Beat Cowboy Obsession.

In the year When the movie “Urban Cowboy” came out in 1980, Lee Peterson was working in merchandising for an American wholesale chain, Ltd. (later L Brands).

Peterson remembers that the film was so popular that, as a fashion buyer, he had no choice but to follow the zeitgeist and stock up on clothes that John Travolta and Debra Winger might have worn in Pasadena, Texas: prairie dresses, cowboy boots, western shirts and fringe jackets.

“That thing blew up,” he said. “It sells like nuts in Central America” ​​- and then elsewhere.

Today, Peterson says he’s seeing the same exact sequence of events play out. Except this time, the cultural phenomenon is Yellowstone, the wildly popular television show about a multigenerational ranching family in Montana.

Tik Tok influencers are declaring the “beach cowgirl” — think cowboy boots paired with a white sweater — the summer trend. On the runway, labels like Prada, Dries Van Noten, Wells Bonner and Diesel dressed in cowboy boots, striped tops and a variety of denim-on-denim looks. This year, retailers in the US and UK introduced 240 percent more new cowboy boots and denim shirts than in the same period last year, according to retail intelligence firm Edited.

It’s truly a global trend: the spring fashion issue of Japanese men’s magazine Brutus features cowboy and Native American-inspired items curated by Santase founder Tase Onuki. In Paris, Fursac’s creative director recently offered tips for square-toe engineer boots — a particularly fruity take on Americana workwear style. In Australia, Google searches for cattle boots have doubled from two years ago.

In the four decades between Urban Cowboy and Yellowstone, Western clothing was not completely dormant. But sometime in the last two or three years, this style has hit a transition point from kitsch clothing to a wardrobe staple. Trend experts say there’s no excuse for the rise in popularity of all things jeans and fringe; Yellowstone is one reason, but the love of the outdoors is growing in the wake of the pandemic. Country music is growing in popularity in the US and beyond (country music is the fastest growing genre in Great Britain). And in the years since Donald Trump’s presidency, the Americana aesthetic so closely associated with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan has taken on a political resonance in many ways.

The trend is predictable for retailers specializing in western wear, such as direct-to-consumer bootmaker Tecovas, equestrian brand Ariat and Boot Barn, a chain that sells clothing and gear to cowboys from Colorado to Connecticut. Boot Bar is on track to open a new store every week, with plans to triple its footprint to 900 locations in the coming years. Western wear plays to the strengths of brands with Americana roots like Ralph Lauren and Wrangler jeans.

But many brands with little, if any, connection to the American West are passing through. Kite, Isabel Marant and Saint Laurent regularly feature Western-inspired styles in their collections. This year and last, MatchesFashion has brought in several brands that specialize in the category, including fashion western bootmaker Toral, Polo Ralph Lauren for women and Italian brand Fortella, which is inspired by the American Western aesthetic. For its spring 2023 menswear collection, Prada paired more than half of its nearly 50 looks with cowboy boots.

“Everyone has this Western curiosity, this Western fetish,” Jan said. “But fashion-wise today, on the runways and in pop culture it’s less fashionable and more mainstream.”

From Nietzsche to the original

The current obsession with all things Western began in 1988. In 2018, Yellowstone launched to mixed reviews.

Before long, clips of the cowboy lifestyle were appearing elsewhere in pop culture as well. In the year In 2019, Lil Nas X had a viral country rap hit, Old Town Road. Jan Rogers Kniffen, a retail veteran and consultant with experience at retailers such as Macy’s and Lord’s and Taylor’s, points out that Dua Lipa’s Full Cowgirl wants her music video. Love Again” in 2021 as another moment. In the video’s big dance number, the pop star wears a cowboy hat, cowhide jacket, zebra-print bikini and bolo tights. The following summer, Beyoncé released her seventh album, Renaissance, which featured her riding a horse in a metal cowboy hat.

The pandemic has upended the lives of people living in their city apartments. Yellowstone National Park and other parks saw record numbers of visitors in May 2021. In 2020, a Gallup survey found that 48 percent of American respondents said they would prefer to live in a small town or rural area, up from 39 percent in 2018. Remote work is made possible for urban professionals to leave the city for rural destinations.

They needed the wardrobe to match.

“In the year since Vivid, it’s been an incredible turnaround,” said Paul Hedrick, founder of Tekovas. “People realized they could work from anywhere, and many of them were exposed to the rest of the country, developing an appreciation for America’s natural beauty… People who wanted to connect with those parts of the country, it was reflected in the culture and dress,” he said.

In the year Tecovas predicts sales growth of 76 percent in 2021 and 31 percent in the following year. This year, the brand is slated to expand its footprint to 30 stores, excluding the Northeast location that will open sometime next year. It is on track to generate more than $200 million in annual revenue.

Another reason for the popularity of the Western boom may be more subtle. The current political climate — still fractious — is in some ways less indictable than the Trump years. That unusual red state America is an easy-to-sell outfit.

“When you think of customers for a show like Yellowstone, it’s more of a red government customer,” Kniffen said. “The question is always, will the Coast Guard accept it? And finally, they did. “

Boom in pursuit

For brands that specialize in western wear, the future looks bright.

Boot Bar’s footprint expansion is fueled in part by what the retailer calls its fashionable customers, said Isha Nicol, the company’s senior vice president of marketing.

“We’ve got this huge customer base that’s hidden in plain sight,” says Nicole. The fashion customer is one of the four consumer groups categorized by the retailer. The others are western, country and workwear – and Boot Barn has seen sales increase in each category. Boot Barn’s revenue for the nine months ended December 24, 2022, rose 11.5% to $1.2 billion compared to the same period last year.

“What happened was that cowboy boots made a natural leap from clothing to jeans,” says Hedrick of Tekovas. “Now when you talk to people in California and New York, the feeling is, ‘Oh yeah, I think I’m ready.'” You can definitely see an increase in interest.

But while brands like Tekovas are embracing and embracing the new demographic of shoppers, few are bending over backwards to accommodate them, instead allowing consumers to discover them organically. Ariat, a brand that makes equestrian apparel and other performance-driven western pieces, told BoF that it will not change its marketing and distribution strategy to target the fashion consumer. Although Boot Barn has big retail plans, it’s not currently planning a location in New York City, where many cowboy boots owners probably aren’t country music fanatics or into rodeos.

“There are a lot of brands that do fashionable interpretations of Western clothing, like what you’ll find at Makias,” says Ariat co-founder and CEO Beth Cross. But people who come to us are looking for the right places to buy, and that’s an experience in itself.

Robert Williams contributed to this article.