From Stetsons on stars to bolos on catwalks, Western wear is suddenly everywhere. In New Mexico, however, cowboy couture is hardly the flavor of the month. It’s a legacy of local style, forged by our history and our makers—including the next generation.
Nolan Hall (@navajo_nolan) wears a 1940s Nathan Turk shirt, 1950s side-zip workwear pants, and Six Hand Hat Company hat at Santa Fe Vintage.
WESTERN STYLE—iconically American and intrinsically Southwestern—is in full swing on a bumpin’ Friday night at the Dirty Bourbon Dance Hall & Saloon, in Albuquerque. From the wooden railing overlooking the crowded 1,300-square-foot dance floor, I spy skintight Wrangler jeans, 10-gallon hats adorned with silver conchos, and dozens of snakeskin cowboy boots, all moving in the timeless rhythm of quick-quick-slow. The attire is perfectly at home at the dance hall off Montgomery Boulevard, but the same looks are just as likely to fly at an elegant restaurant near the Santa Fe Plaza or on a Clovis cattle ranch.
In New Mexico, we don our Levi’s for work, wear crisp pearl-snap-button shirts to dinner, and sport elegantly bejeweled bolo ties at weddings and in courtrooms. We spend our weekends trawling vintage shops in search of elusive Chimayó jackets and perusing the portal in Old Town Albuquerque for the perfect silver cuff bracelet made by Native artisans. Western fashion’s practicality lends itself to our rugged environment and casual lifestyle. Its local origins speak to our multicultural heritage, and its timeless designs have become part of our collective identity.
Francesca Maestas (@francesca_maestas) and ShanDien Sonwai LaRance (@sonwaii) model designs by Carrie Wood and accessories by Dineh & Co.
Hell, our passion for Western fashion goes to the top. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic—when Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham shut down all nonessential businesses—Albuquerque news station KRQE reported that she violated her own rules to shop for jewelry. (A spokesperson for the governor countered that the contactless transaction was simply a “creative” way to conduct business and within lockdown guidelines.) The late, much-beloved Governor Bill Richardson also had a fashion infatuation. His estate sale in Santa Fe was the most well-attended event of its kind recently, where former constituents got to ogle and bid on his impressive collection of bolo ties.
For much of the mainstream fashion world, however, Western wear was considered fringe (pun intended)—until recently. In February, Vogue declared 2024 “the year of the cowboy.” The proclamation came on the heels of Pharrell Williams’s “modern cowboy” menswear collection for Louis Vuitton. In March came the release of Beyoncé’s chart-topping country music album, Cowboy Carter—its announcement during the Super Bowl skyrocketed global Google searches for “cowboy hats” by 212 percent from the previous week.
Women on horseback don cowgirl attire in the 1920s.
Photograph courtesy of Palace of the Governors Photo Archives #HP.2015.26.256.
Although “cowboy core” (as some call the fashion phenomenon) has lassoed the zeitgeist, the trend has been on the upswing for several years. A post-pandemic appreciation for the outdoors and a simpler way of life is thought to be one driving factor. The surging popularity and crossover appeal of country music is another. As is a resurgence of the Western genre, on big and small screens alike.
“It’s the Yellowstone effect,” says Amy Violette, a Santa Fe–based fashion stylist and leather handbag designer. At the height of the Paramount series’ popularity in 2022, Violette worked for the historic Bishop’s Lodge resort to provide guided shopping experiences for visitors. “Women would bring in pictures of Beth Dutton and ask to look like that,” she says of the beguiling Yellowstone character played by Kelly Reilly, who rocks denim shirts, wool ponchos, and slinky floral dresses. “It was sexy to be a cowboy again,” Violette says.
Although many of her clients at Bishop’s Lodge hailed from Texas and other Western and Southern states, Violette says they specifically want to buy outfits in Santa Fe. “Western wear made here feels more authentic,” she muses from under the brim of her dusty black flat-brim cowboy hat. “There’s a mystique and romance to New Mexico.”
Rodeo Hall of Famer Mabel Strickland.
Photograph courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives #200054.
That authenticity is rooted in New Mexico history, says Corrales native Cassidy Zachary, a historian and co-host of the fashion history podcast Dressed. “Western wear gets conflated into one image, but it stems from a rich multicultural history,” she says. Before the Mexican–American War, vaqueros (Spanish or Mexican cowboys) originated many of the West’s classic styles—heeled leather boots (botas), chaps (chaparreras), and wide-brim hats (sombreros)—in the Southwest.
“The clothes were utilitarian,” Zachary explains. “Bandanas protected the neck from the sun, chaps from spiky desert terrain.” Decorative embellishments evolved as Hispano herdsmen, Anglo-American traders, and Indigenous artisans engaged in intercultural exchange, particularly along the Santa Fe Trail in the early to mid-19th century.
By the early 20th century, dime novels and Wild West shows had firmly established a mythic cowboy aesthetic in the collective American imagination. But the Southwest in particular continued to influence Western fashions. Tourists came to New Mexico to “play cowboy,” says Zachary, dressing the part at high-end dude ranches like Bishop’s Lodge. At Fred Harvey–owned restaurants and hotels, like La Fonda on the Plaza, Easterners clamored for Indigenous-made designs, including Pueblo motifs, Navajo broom skirts, turquoise and silver jewelry, beadwork, and leather goods. Influential Anglo patrons and designers subsequently co-opted these fashions and popularized them as “Santa Fe style,” which had its most recent mainstream moment during the Urban Cowboy craze of the early 1980s.
“It’s a unique American design language stitched together by newcomers and Indigenous cultures living in this tough region.”
—Amber-Dawn Bear Robe
“Southwestern style is Western wear,” says Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, an art history professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). “But there are so many layers to it.” During the early 20th century, she explains, there was “a push among American curators and artists to distinguish the U.S. from Europe, and Native designs and the Southwest were seen as uniquely American.”
Cultural appropriation and uncredited Indigenous work continued throughout the century. In the 1940s and ’50s, Bear Robe says, IAIA co-founder Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee) was one of the few Native designers able to bust barriers and bring innovative Indigenous designs to the mainstream, with colorful silk fabrics incorporating Native letters and symbols. “He was essential,” Zachary says firmly.
This latest incarnation of Western wear from New Mexico, however, promises to break some long-standing exploitative practices in mainstream fashion. Native designers have never been more visible. Diné weaver Naiomi Glasses, for example, recently launched collaborative collections with Ralph Lauren—who has mined New Mexico for design inspiration for nearly half a century.
Nolan Hall wears a Chimayó jacket among Santa Fe Vintage’s large selection of denim.
At May’s inaugural Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Native Fashion Week in Santa Fe, for which Bear Robe was program director, square-jawed Indigenous male models commanded the catwalk in bold shirts featuring Pueblo patterns by Acoma designer Loren Aragon. Vogue’s coverage of the annual Santa Fe Indian Market—the fashions on display and the Indigenous celebs who frequent the 102-year-old event—has significantly ramped up in recent years.
Bear Robe says that New Mexico’s corner on Western wear has a multilayered, complex appeal. “It’s a unique American design language stitched together by newcomers and Indigenous cultures living in this tough region,” she says. “It’s functional, it’s high glamour, it’s rodeo, it’s Nudie suits. It’s symbolic of the myths of the American West. It changes to reflect contemporary times. That’s what fashion does—it looks for inspiration and kicks it up a notch.”
Whether our #NMTrue Western wear is found on a dusty ranch outside Ruidoso or hung in a high-end boutique in Taos, country couture is inextricable from the fabric of our state. It’s who we are—and it’s here to stay.
“That’s why I always tell my clients to buy locally made, good-quality items that last,” Violette says, motioning to the silver-and-turquoise Calvin Begay ring on her finger. “Learn their provenance. Get to know the makers and the stories that go along with them.”
