The Cowboy Never Left: Western Style Then and Now
The Cowboy Never Left: Western Style Then and Now
The great cattle drives lasted about twenty years. The clothes have lasted a hundred and fifty.
Twenty Years on the Trail
The age of the long cattle drive was short. After the Civil War, cowboys drove herds north out of Texas to the railheads in Kansas. By the late 1880s, railroads and barbed wire had mostly ended it. It lasted about twenty years. It is one of the shortest chapters in American history, and it gave the country its longest lasting style.
The cowboy was never one kind of man. Much of what he wore and used came from the Mexican vaquero: the saddle, the rope, the chaps. The word lariat comes from la reata. Historians estimate that as many as one in four cowboys were Black. The look belonged to everyone who rode.
What the Clothes Were For
Every piece had a job. The heel of the boot held the stirrup. The hat kept off sun and rain. The snaps on a western shirt tore free if a rider caught on a saddle horn. Jeans were cut long so they stacked over the boot in the saddle and stayed down when the knee bent.
The West Right Now
The West is back at the center of the culture. Yellowstone premiered in 2018 and turned a whole country toward ranch life. Western shirts, boots, and horsehide are worn from Nashville to Tokyo.
Some of the men carrying the West forward wear our clothes. There is a Zach Bryan edition of our western jacket in ivory rough-out. Jefferson White, who plays Jimmy on Yellowstone, is photographed on our site in the Rough-RIDER.
Our Western Pieces
The Indigo Cowboy Jeans are cut from 13oz shuttle loom woven selvedge produced specially for Black Bear Brand. They have a true cowboy cut with a 40 inch inseam, long on purpose, so each man can wear them his own way. The front pocket is designed to hold a large cowboy buckle. The stitching is triple-needle in gold thread, and the back pockets are our teardrop shape with the swoop stitch. The BLACK Cowboy Jeans take the same design into black denim with black thread.
Above the jeans sit our western Horween horsehide jackets, in black, aged ivory, the ghost white Spirit Bear, and the saddle western pocket. The Rough-RIDER is a horsehide over-shirt in roughout leather, the shape many people call a commander jacket. Roughout, rough out, and rough-out all mean the same thing: the suede side faces out and the finished side faces in.
The drives ended long ago. The cowboy never left.
A Way Of Life.
Shop the Story
BLACK Western Horween Horsehide Jacket
Related Reading
Denim and the Cowboy: The Making of an American Uniform
The Pearl Snap Shirt: How a Cowboy Detail Became an American Icon