The American cowboy roamed the plains west of the Mississippi River in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. His job involved tending cattle, usually miles from where he lived and for months at a time. The cowboy developed a functional manner of dress that suited his unique lifestyle. Some of the key elements of cowboy attire have entered into the American popular imagination and become symbols of a romantic and lost way of life.
The American cowboys borrowed much of their clothing, along with many of their customs, from the earlier vaqueros, herdsmen of Mexican and American Indian descent who migrated northward over the Rio Grande River into Texas. Necessity also dictated a lot of the cowboy's attire. A cowboy had to carry everything he might need with him on his horse. He was plagued by many dangers, including hostile American Indians, rattlesnakes, cattle rustlers, sudden rainstorms, flooding rivers, and stampeding cattle. Virtually everything the cowboy wore or kept close at hand was designed to help him overcome these obstacles.
A typical cowboy outfit consisted of a muslin (sheer cotton fabric) shirt with a waistcoat, similar to a vest, and denim or buckskin trousers. To protect his legs when riding through thorny brush, the cowboy wore a set of leggings called chaps, an abbreviation of chaparejos, the Spanish word for the leggings, over his trousers. Chaps were made of leather or animal hide, often with the fur left on the outside, and covered only the front of the legs to allow for freedom of movement. Fur chaps made of bear and goat were used on the northern ranges. Chaps were attached by a belt at the waist and ties along the back of the legs. Some early chaps were fringed at the seams.
Another essential component of cowboy style was the wide-brimmed hat, designed to protect the wearer from the harsh elements of the open plain, especially the blistering sun. Cowboy hats added an element of individuality to the cowboy's attire. Often the cowboy would make his own hat. There were regional distinctions as well. It was said that you could tell where a cowboy came from by the shape of his hat. The most famous cowboy hat of all was designed by John B. Stetson of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Stetson hats were made of wool felt with a large brim and oval, cylindrical crown. So many cowboys wore Stetson hats that the hats came to be known as "Boss of the Plains" and became a symbol of the American West.
A kerchief tied loosely around the neck performed a variety of functions for the cowboy. He could use it to protect his mouth and nose from dust, cover the back of his neck to prevent sunburn, or tie it around his head to keep his hat from blowing off on windy days. It could even be used as a makeshift sling for a broken arm. Red was the preferred color for these versatile bandannas, often called wipes.
A typical cowboy outfit consisted of a kerchief around the neck and denim or buckskin trousers. To protect his legs the cowboy wore a set of leggings called "chaps," and the wide-brimmed hat protected his head.
Still popular in the twenty-first century is the cowboy boot. It was the most expensive part of the cowboy's wardrobe. Store-bought boots sold for seven dollars in 1880, while tailor-made models could go for as much as fifteen dollars. A high "Cuban heel" prevented the wearer's foot from slipping through his stirrup. When dismounting from a horse, the heels dug into the ground to ensure good footing. Early cowboy boots had square toes, though round and pointed styles eventually came into fashion. By the 1890s fancy cowboy boots were being sold through mail-order catalogs.
Cowboys first captured the public imagination during the large-scale cattle drives north from Texas in the period just after the American Civil War (1861�65). Their numbers steadily decreased with the decline of the open range and the advent of homesteading, the establishment of houses and farms on open land. While the cowboy era lasted barely a generation, the cowboy style lived on in the form of dime novels, movie serials, and television programs and remains a popular style of dress for many people in the United States.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Blue Jeans
Durable, heavy-duty pants made from dark blue cotton fabric, blue jeans were first created as work pants for the gold miners of the 1849 California gold rush, a time when people of the United States rapidly moved into California in search of gold. Once worn only by those who did heavy manual labor, jeans became one of the most popular and common clothing items of the twentieth century. Blue jeans moved from work clothes to the preferred pants of rebellious young men during the 1950s and 1960s to high fashion items. By the end of the twentieth century, a comfortable pair of jeans had become a necessity in the casual wardrobe of both men and women. Though they are bought, sold, and worn in almost every country in the world, blue jeans are still regarded as a fundamentally American garment.
The word "jeans" had been used since the 1600s to describe the rough clothing worn by working men, because this type of clothing was often made of sturdy jean, or genes fabric from Genoa, Italy. Denim, the durable fabric which is almost always used to make modern blue jeans, was originally made in N�mes, France. American manufacturers shortened the name serge de N�mes, to denim. Denim fabric was often dyed dark blue so that work clothes made from it would not show dirt and stains.
The first blue jeans were created by teamwork between a tailor, Jacob Davis, and a merchant, Levi Strauss, who were both interested in making a profit by selling clothing to the thousands of miners drawn to the California gold rush. Strauss was selling tent fabric, work clothes, and other supplies to miners when he was approached in 1873 by Davis, a tailor who had developed the idea of making work clothes stronger by putting copper rivets, or fasteners, at certain points, like pockets, which were likely to tear. Together, Davis and Strauss began to make what they called "waist overalls" out of sturdy denim fabric with copper rivets. Over the years, the pants came to be called jeans or Levis.
Over the next decades, the popularity of blue jeans spread among working people, such as farmers and the ranchers of the American West. Jeans became so popular among cowboys that during the 1930s, a company called Wrangler formed just to make denim work clothing for those who rode the range. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s many people began spending their spare time at the movies, where popular Western films found glamour and romance in the adventures of the cowboys who rode horses, shot bad guys, and wore blue jeans. Those who wished to imitate the casual, rugged look of the cowboys they saw in films began to wear jeans as casual wear.
During World War II (1939�45) blue jeans became part of the official uniform of the Navy and Coast Guard, and became even more popular when worn as off-duty leisure clothing by many other soldiers. During the 1950s many young people began to wear jeans when they saw them on rebellious young American film stars such as Marlon Brando (1924�) and James Dean (1931�1955). Blue jeans were so identified with American culture that they were placed in the American exhibit at the 1958 World's Fair. Around the same time, the first jeans were exported to Europe.
The rebellious image of blue jeans continued into the 1960s and 1970s, when the nonconformist hippie youth made ragged, patched blue jeans part of their uniform. Jeans had become extremely popular, but were still mainly worn by working people or the young. During the 1980s this began to change as famous fashion designers created designer jeans, which were expensive and became fashionable wear for many occasions.
By the end of the twentieth century, blue jeans had become one of the most widely worn items of clothing in the world. In 2001 a pair of Levis dating from the 1880s and found buried under layers of mud in Nevada was sold at auction for over forty-five thousand dollars.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Lindmier, Tom, and Steve Mount. I See by Your Outfit: Historic Cowboy Gear of the Northern Plains. Glendo, WY: High Plains Press, 1996.
Reedstrom, E. Lisle. Authentic Costumes and Characters of the Old West. New York: Sterling Publishers, 1992.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Coats
Following the American and French Revolutions of the late 1700s, an appreciation for democracy and for the common man spread over the Western world. This led to a plainer style of dress for the men of the 1800s than had been the fashion in the centuries before. Elaborate frills and fancy decorations were replaced by simple styles in basic colors. The coat was one of the central elements of the nineteenth-century man's everyday wardrobe, and, though there were many different popular styles, they all reflected the less showy fashion of the times.
During the early 1800s, the desired masculine shape featured a large chest and a small waist, and the coats of the day were designed to help achieve this figure. Shoulders and chests were often padded to make the top appear larger, and coattails were cut full to emphasize the slim waist. Depending on the wealth of the wearer coats were made of wool, cotton, or linen, and different fabrics were worn in different weather. The most popular coat styles of the first part of the century were the frock coat and the cutaway coat. Both were rather formal coats with a design based on the British hunting coat, cut up to the waist in the front with long tails in the back. The cutaway had a curved line along the side and rounded tails in the back, while the frock coat was cut in a straight line to a pair of pointed coat tails in the back. Frock coats also had a trim piece at the back waist with two buttons for decoration. The frock coat remained the most common coat for daytime wear into the 1890s. However, while bright reds, greens, and yellows were popular in the early 1800s, by the second half of the century most men wore only dark colored coats, such as black and navy.
The fitted silhouette of the coats of the early 1800s was replaced at mid-century by straight-cut jackets that hung loose from shoulder to hip. Another development during the second half of the century was the introduction of special clothing for sports. In 1837 the captain of the British ship H.M.S. Blazer outfitted his men in a short boxy double-breasted (two rows of buttons down the front) jacket. The new style caught on and "blazers" became popular wear for such sporting activities as boating and tennis. In 1890 the Norfolk jacket was introduced; it was a hip-length loose coat which was meant to be worn with the knee pants called knickerbockers. The Norfolk and knickers, or knee-length pants, soon became popular casual wear for men and boys of all classes.
Men of the 1800s also had a variety of overcoats to choose from. For those who preferred an old-fashioned look, cloaks were still acceptable, such as the dramatic Garrick, which was a long velvet cape trimmed with fur. The Chesterfield was the most common modern coat, a long, straight-cut single-breasted coat, usually made of black wool with a velvet collar. Some stylish men wore buffalo or beaver fur coats that reached their ankles, while others preferred the dashing look of the Inverness, a sleeveless wool plaid coat with a short cape that hung from the collar around the shoulders.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Bigelow, Marybelle S. Fashion in History: Western Dress, Prehistoric to Present. Minneapolis, MN: Burgess Publishing, 1970.
Laver, James. Costume and Fashion: A Concise History. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Crinoline
Full crinoline underskirts were necessities of popular women's fashions of the mid-1800s. As skirt styles became fuller during the century, women were burdened by having to wear several layers of petticoats, or stiff, heavy, and uncomfortable, fabric underskirts. Petticoats were replaced by lightweight hoop crinolines, which allowed skirt styles to expand even further.
The word crinoline comes from the French word crin, meaning "horsehair," because early crinolines were made from horsehair and wool. Elegant ladies of the mid-nineteenth century wore very wide skirts, and stiff horsehair crinolines held the skirts out from the body. Some crinolines measured more than four yards around the bottom, and women wearing these skirts had to move carefully to avoid knocking things off of tables as they moved around a room. It was said that an average sized room could hold only two or three women wearing crinolines.
The hoop crinoline was made of a series of steel rings, which got gradually bigger in size, connected by cotton tape into a sort of cage that fit under a skirt to hold it out.
Around 1850, women were much relieved when a new kind of crinoline was invented. The hoop crinoline, as it was called, was made of a series of steel rings, which got gradually bigger in size, connected by cotton tape into a sort of cage that fit under a skirt to hold it out. Though the new hoops were much lighter weight and more comfortable than the old horse-hair crinolines, they still had one similar problem: if a woman was not very careful when she sat down, her skirt would swing up in front of her, exposing her underpants. This was a serious problem in a time of great modesty, when the sight of a woman's ankle was considered shocking. The wide skirts also made it impossible for women to sit down in carriages, and a woman traveling often had to kneel or sit on the carriage floor.
By the late 1880s, women had had enough of the inconveniences of extremely wide skirts and crinolines passed out of fashion as slimmer, more tailored-looking skirts became popular.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Batterberry, Michael, and Ariane Batterberry. Fashion: The Mirror of History. New York: Greenwich House, 1982.
Bigelow, Marybelle S. Fashion in History: Apparel in the Western World. Minneapolis, MN: Burgess Publishing, 1970.
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