A friend of mine was joking about her taste for country music, and it reminded me that I've not written much about western wear. Country-and-western clothing is a textile art form all its own, especially when it was executed by masters like Nudie the Rodeo Tailor. After all, what are our indigenous North American textile traditions? We've got Amish quilts, Navajo blankets and weaving, Hawaiian shirts, and yes, western wear.
When I first came to Colorado, I had a musical mentor who taught me about traditional country music and about Gram Parsons, the cosmic American cowboy himself. Naturally I started noticing the textiles that went with the music, and cool girls like Emmylou and the earliest iteration of the Dixie Chicks who were wearing them. My appetite for kitsch isn't quite what it used to be, but I still have a few pieces I love, including this 1940s shirt made of wool gabardine - it's very fitted, as might be expected from the "hollywood" label, so it makes for a very stylish vintage look. I think the buttons are not the originals.
And then there's the cowboy shirt I made back in the early 90s in Chicago, very sloooowly, with hand-beaded fringe, emroidery and applique. I wasn't brave enough to try smile pockets at the time. Folkwear has a pattern for very traditional western-style shirts with instructions for smile pockets, if you want to try your hand at it.
And this is what remains of a vintage canvas jacket, now patiently waiting to be creatively repurposed someday:
Not long after the cowboy shirt project, I'd moved on to making some rather loud but really fun pieced and appliqued vests, many of them for my musician friends. I'll put those in another post. But cowgirls were some of the most audacious and independent women in American culture back in the day, and even if you -- like me -- have never been on a horse, it's good to remember we've all got a little cowgirl soul.