Saddle up: Beyoncé approves of cowboycore

By CNN Newsource

Published February 16, 2024 12:00 AM

By Leah Dolan, CNN

(CNN) — You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.

That seemed to be the message behind Beyoncé’s latest appearance when she surprised Bushwick by sitting front row at the Luar show during New York Fashion Week on Tuesday. The global superstar — who is originally from Houston, Texas —arrived in a blacked-out SUV anddazzled onlookers in a gray, sequin-encrusted Gaurav Gupta blazer, matching thigh-high boots and a holographic Luar bag. Completing her look were a pair of aviator-style shades, an embellished head scarf and a stone-colored cowboy hat.

In fact, Beyoncé hasn’t been without a cowboy hat in nearly two weeks. At the Grammys on February 4, she showed out in a custom Louis Vuitton studded leather mini skirt and jacket topped off with a bone-white Stetson. There’s no mystery as to why. On Sunday Beyoncé announced her forthcoming album, “Renaissance II,” would be a country record — releasing two banjo-infused teaser tracks, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages.”

And although the sudden abundance of ten-gallon hats might be part of a larger promotional strategy, Beyoncé isn’t the only celebrity to make a sartorial pivot west.

Earlier this month, Bella Hadid revealed she had entered a rodeo competition in Weatherford, Texas with her horse, Tito. As W Magazine wrote, Hadid brought a “supermodel touch to rodeo style” in her leather fringed chaps, skin-tight collared shirt and biscuit-colored cowboy hat. Similarly on Tuesday, as if a cowboy klaxon had sounded somewhere, Kim Kardashian posted an Instagram of her Super Bowl party outfit: A pair of black flared jeans and a $650 custom black Stetson.

Out on the menswear runways in Paris in January, the horseplay didn’t stop. Much of Louis Vuitton’s latest collection centered on ranch style. For Pharrell’s third season, models walked onto a dusty copper carpeted runway — framed by an imposing backdrop of rocky, desert mountains — in chaps, turquoise earrings, bolero ties and suit jackets with cactus motifs.

On TikTok #cowboycore has 11.4 million views and counting, where users video themselves styling a wide-brimmed rancher cap or, as in one video, pairing vintage leather chaps with a belted trench coat. Searches for “cowboy” on Pinterest have almost doubled since December, as has interest in the phrase “cowboy aesthetic.”

But the cornerstones of this western-inspired trend have long been part of fashion’s vocabulary. Cowboy boots, for one, were plucked from their country context and thrust onto the urban streets of metropolitan cities years ago. They’ve been worn by everyone from Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana to Britney Spears and Kate Moss.

Tom Ford gave the slouchy shoe makeover in his 2014 show, when he paired a knee-high turquoise alligator-leather pair with a cheetah print skirt and fishnets. Celine helped revive the workwear shoe even further in 2015 for their Spring-Summer 2016 show, while Raf Simons sent a lime green pair down the runway in 2017. The embroidered leather boots have been a mainstay of the style set ever since, transcending over the years from a subversive statement piece to something more timeless.

Now, it seems the rest of the farmhand get-up isn’t far behind.