Forget bucking broncos -- some of the wildest sights in the West can be found right inside a cowpoke's closet. From fringed chaps and embroidered jeans to silver-spurred boots and ten-gallon Stetsons, Western wear is a uniquely American look that has romanced the entire world. Journalist Holly George-Warren and designer Michelle Freedman, aided by curator James H. Nottage, round up the different styles of this enduring trend in How the West Was Worn, an authoritative yet entertaining look at "glitterbillies, " long riders, rodeo girls, and rhinestone cowboys.
Accompanying an exhibition at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, this colorful tribute features archival photos of celebrities as well as collectibles like vintage album covers, mail-order catalogues, and sewing patterns. The lively, fact-filled text, including a foreword by country-music star and Western-wear collector Marty Stuart, makes this book a barrel of fun for fashion devotees and country music fans alike.
Western-wear buckaroos will think that they have died and gone to the great ponderosa in the sky when they sit down with this over-the-mountaintop book, which accompanies the eponymous exhibition at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles through January 21, 2002. Rolling Stone Press editor George-Warren and clothing designer Freedman trace the progression of Western clothing from its mountain men and cowboy progenitors through the iconographic restyling of Hollywood and Nashville to the off-the-rack consumer incarnations produced by companies like Rockmount Ranch Wear and H Bar C. All the designer luminaries are well represented, including Rodeo Ben, Manuel, Katy K, and Nudie. The color and black-and-white photographs will fringe, chainstitch, and rhinestone your Rocketbuster boots off, and the text, not to be entirely upstaged, provides depth and clarity. Other titles like True West, 100 Years of Western Wear, and Way Out West (all o.p.) are good, but this one is art; and at $45, it is also a steal. For Western-wear clothes horses, fans, collectors, and anyone who was ever hoisted as a kid onto a pony in full faux Western regalia. Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
In How the West Was Worn, Holly George-Warren and Michelle Freedman offer a sartorial history of the American West. From the pre-20th-century origins of western style to Hollywood westerns, rodeo stars, cowboy crooners, ranchers and businessmen, good old boys from the Tetons to Dallas are presented in all their tooled, embroidered, sequined, fringed, 10-galloned, gun-toting finery. Accompanying an exhibit at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles, this loving catalogue of inimitable western styles will have broad classic and kitsch appeal, depending on the audience. George-Warren (Garcia), editor of Rolling Stone Press, and Freedman, a clothing designer and writer, give engaging scholarly treatment to the clothes that help make the icon. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
