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It’s not just Beyoncé; everyone is going country these days. From Pharrell Williams’s Wild West-inflected men’s collection for Louis Vuitton to Lana Del Rey announcing her pivot to country music, “Cowboy Carter” is only the tip of the iceberg for the full-blown Western renaissance we’ve yet to see more of. But this resurgence isn’t anything new.

It has seeped into fashion and popular media before: in 2016, when Alessandro Michele riffed on nudie suits and ten-gallon hats during his tenure at Gucci; in 2017, when Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri put Western-inspired ensembles on the Calvin Klein and Dior runways respectively; and in 2019, when Lil Nas X led what stan culture likes to remember as the “ Yeehaw Agenda ,” via “Old Town Road” and a Cardi B feature on the track “Rodeo.” Even Solange and Lizzo dipped their toes into the aesthetic, and there was the chart-topping layered crooning of Kacey Musgraves, who opened for Harry Styles’s Madison Square Garden leg of his tour, that gave the time its backing. Designers gave the agenda a wardrobe to match, presented on the runways of Telfar Clemens , Pyer Moss , and LaQuan Smith .



But hints of Western wear appeared even before that, when the early-aughts response to Brokeback Mountain was a Marc Jacobs and Wrangler collaboration and a speckling on the runways, or when Thierry Mugler presented a pair of bedazzled ruby-red chaps at his Haute Couture 1992 show. This is all to say, “It never really w.

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