Musings on Art and Style

From Mid-Century Rodeos to Modern Japanese Couture,

Western Shirts Are Consummately Cool

Western Wear started trickling into popular fashion again last year. In Fall 2021 the quintessentially American style is having a full blown moment. The thing is though, Western Wear has existed to some extent in popular fashion for the better part of the past century. Exceptional versatility and a vibe of cool indifference have kept the look alive. So many brands and social groups have adopted Western Wear over the years that its origins have been muddled in legend. The real history of the look is rooted in an amalgamation of cultures as diverse as America itself. 

As the name suggests, Western Wear is a style of dress influenced by the South-Western United States. Three distinctly different cultures clashed and mingled in this vast territory throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Inevitably, cultural elements were shared between the White American settlers, the Spanish settlers who inhabited the land for centuries before them and the Native Americans who lived there for millenia.

Originally, Western Wear was workwear used by ranch hands. In the mid twentieth century, rodeo performers created more decorative pieces based on Mexican vaquero attire. Native American fabrics, textures, and jewelry were also appropriated into the mix. The Western Shirt with flapped shield pockets and pointed details on the upper chest began as an US Cavalry uniform during the Civil War. They were originally made out of wool but denim became the fabric of choice by the early 1900s. 

Western wear may conjure images of nineteenth century cowboys and while the genre’s roots go back to the 1870s, the Western look as we know it came together just after World War 2. Legend has it that cowboy couturier Papa Jack Wilde was the first to put pearl snap buttons on the front of Western Shirt in 1946 when he founded Rockmount Ranch Wear. Country music artists adopted the look from ranch and rodeo culture in the 1950s and introduced it into popular culture outside of the Southwest. 

In the 1960s, fashion icons like Robert Redford and Steve McQueen showed how cool elements of Western Wear looked mingled with popular fashion. When Rock artists started adopting elements of Country into their music in the 1970s, they picked some fashion along with it. By the mid-1970s, Western Wear had made its way from small town honky tonks to big city dive bars. 

As Western Wear proliferated into popular fashion, it was the pearl button denim shirt that led the way. The former US Cavalry uniform became so synonymous with Western style that it became known as the Western Shirt. It most commonly appears in denim, the more worn in the better, but comes in a vast array of fabrics and textures. Ralph Lauren solidified the Western Shirt’s place in popular fashion by incorporating them heavily into his designs and his personal wardrobe. His empire may have been built on oxfords and polos but history has shown that the Western Shirt is his favorite. 

Western Shirts have continued to evolve in the twenty-first century under the influence of Japanese culture. The Japanese obsession with mid-century American culture revitalized the denim industry in the 2010s and the Western Shirt along with it. They breathed new life into the old American garment with sashiko embroidery and traditional Japanese fabrics and textures. Japanese brands like Kapital, United Arrows and Visvim now make some of the best Western Shirts in the world. So the evolution of Western Wear continues through adoption and reinvention. 

Here is my collection of Western Shirts:

Pushing the Season is Riskier Than Ever for Fashion Brands

So Why Do They Keep Doing it?

Sure as the leaves turn colors with autumn’s first chill, the annual dropping of Fall lines has begun for most fashion brands (only a few months ahead of the chill). Cold weather gear has appeared in digital and physical marketplaces everywhere in spite of the weather. 2021 has been the hottest year on record globally as climate change bears down upon us. Drought and wildfires are ravaging the West Coast of the United States like Biblical Plaques. Yet the fashion industry is soldiering on blindly, pushing their launch calendars up a little further every year. 

The cycle has become irritatingly predictable: Fall/Winter clothing shows up everywhere in late July, when it is least needed. Then by New Year’s Day, as the heart of winter engulfs the northern half of the country, that same Fall/Winter clothing is sharply discounted and picked over. Just when the apparel is most seasonally appropriate, availability of sizing and styles has dropped off. The same situation applies to Spring/Summer items disappearing by the 4th of July. 

So why do brands release merchandise so prematurely? Why are they defiant of nature in a way that appears progressively more naive every year? The short answer is that every brand wants to get a jump on their competitors and offer you the gear you need before anyone else does. The idea is that the first options out there will ultimately sell the most. However minor that gain might be, these are capitalist companies and any advantage will be exploited. The problem is that this system and thought process has been antiquated for a long time now. It has been a root cause for the financial sufferings of many traditional fashion brands. 

Jumping the season earlier and earlier for decades led to a system where brands became far too dependent on predictions of consumer habits and market trends. Fashion is so fluid and fickle that predictions, especially of fleeting trends, are inherently unreliable over longer time scales. Traditional fashion brands have to make decisions up to a year in advance of items hitting the market. Pushing the calendar ahead three months of actual functionality significantly decreases your margin for error. In an industry where the margin for error is already razor thin, that prematurity can lead to disaster. 

Over production is one of, if not the biggest cause of financial loss for fashion companies. Clothing and apparel, like cars, are a depreciating asset in most cases. With few exceptions, the longer merchandise remains in the brand’s possession, the less profitable it becomes. Square footage is at a premium in every retail store and warehouse so when older merchandise starts taking up space it costs the company money.

The other cost of over production is psychological. Brands have to discount the ticket prices of excess merchandise, either permanently with clearance or temporarily with promotions (sometimes both). This practice is expected for any brand but after a certain point, brands who are forced to discount too much merchandise too frequently take a hit to their image and perceived value. This can lead to a snowball effect where the more consumer perception of  a brand’s value drops, the more that brand is forced to lower prices which further decreases their perceived value. 

You would think that with all the damage caused by pushing the season in the past, combined with the instability caused by COVID, you wouldn’t see topcoats pop up on your social media feed in July. Yet there they are, along with all the emails and targeted ads announcing the first drops of Fall ‘21 merchandise. It may seem like the kind of willful ignorance that the fashion industry is too often guilty of but old habits die hard.

The temptation of being first is too great for most brands to ignore. Marketing logic dictates that summer has already peaked by mid-July and consumers will soon be interested in next season’s looks. If your brand can spark that interest and your products are out there before your competitors, then you’ve got the edge. Brands may have been burned before, maybe more than a few times, but that fire is still too pretty not to play with. 

How and Why European Football Coaches Have Style and American Football Coaches Don’t

The Euro Cup 2020(21) Final is set with Italy taking on the host nation England. Italy is on a remarkable streak, the longest unbeaten streak in team history, as they compensate for missing the last World Cup. England hasn’t been in a major tournament final since they won the 1966 World Cup, which they also hosted coincidentally. Sunday’s match is shaping up to be a thing of legend. Yet the topic preoccupying my mind is sartorial majesty displayed on the sidelines by both coaching staffs. The world’s greatest menswear exhibition may have just taken place in Florence at Pitti Uomo but the second greatest has been on display all over Europe at the Euro Cup. 

Admittedly I’m an American with a fleeting interest in “football.” I appreciate the beautiful game when it’s played on this scale but I’ve only caught a handful of matches in this tournament and I can’t name a single player on any team (though I’ve come to recognize Sterling of England as probably the MVP of the tournament, especially if England wins). I do know a damn fine suit when I see one however, and I’ve seen a lot of them on ESPN this past month. Which brings me to the point that seeing excellent suiting, or excellent style in general, on the playing field is almost non-existent in American sports. 

While the rest of the world has “football,” we Americans have Football and it is a sad fact that American Football coaches have embarrassingly poor style compared to their European counterparts. From Michigan’s Jim Harbugh with his khakis, turtleneck, M hat and clubmaster glasses to New England’s Bill Belichick with his cut off hoodie sleeves and general slovenliness, American coaches have their looks but it certainly isn’t stylish. Standing next to England’s Gareth Southgate and Italy’s Roberto Mancini, American football coaches look like the clearance section at Models. 

In their defense, the poor wardrobe selection of most American coaches isn’t entirely their fault. As with so many ailments of American culture, marketing is to blame. The NFL and almost every major NCAA athletics program have contractual obligations with their apparel providers to wear only their merchandise during games. This includes every play, coach, and staff member down to the waterboys. This fact got media attention back in the mid 2000s when then Jacksonville and San Fransisco head coaches Jack Del Rio and Mike Nolan wanted to wear suits while coaching games. To avoid breaching their contracts they struck a deal with then NFL apparel provider Reebok to make them suits. The result was far from bespoke tailoring but it was the closest the NFL has come in half a century to the elevated style of European coaches. But there is a long lost age of elevated American Football coach style.

American coaches haven’t always dressed like suburban dads coaching rec. soccer. Before the monster apparel contracts began in the 1980s, coaches were free to wear whatever they wanted. American football coaches used to approach their wardrobes with the same attitude as modern European coaches: they were professionals representing a team and all the people who stand behind that team and they should dress accordingly. Legendary mid-century American coaches like Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi, and Bear Bryant always displayed iconic mid-century menswear on the sidelines. Landry’s suit and tophat combination was an inspiration for Don Draper’s style on Med Men. Lombardi’s topcoat game rivals anyone in history. Bryant single handedly made houndstooth a staple texture of American menswear. 

Unfortunately there is far too much money involved with apparel contracts in American Football for there to be any hope of a coaching style renaissance. The culture of American coaches dressing like their fans, like a stereotypical suburban dad, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. After all, it helps the NFL and Colleges sell more merchandise if fans can dress like their team’s coach. Even if very talented coaches come along that have excellent style, there are probably team owners and athletic directors behind the scenes coaxing them to stick with the brand. 

For now, American menswear enthusiasts will have to continue looking across the pond to see excellent sideline style. Coaches at this year’s Euro Cup has turned out with bespoke tailoring, subtle team color accents, high fashion leisurewear, and the watches – my god – the watches. There is no doubt that Europe’s two best teams are meeting on the pitch Sunday (unless you’re from Denmark or Spain), and the match should be a display of football at it’s finest. Personally though, I’m excited to get one more look at that jacket and tie combination dawned by the Italian coaching staff.