HOW THE WEST WAS WORN

Western movies aren't made as frequently as they were in the classic era of Hollywood. But the image of western men and women remains iconic, with only subtle variations over time. The looks are based to a degree on historic dress - but the desired image on screen is always influenced by current taste  - and the requirements of producers and directors.



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Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under, 1990



Since the images of cowboys, Native Americans, vaqueros, pioneers, trappers, and scouts  were so much a part of America's formative years, they have frequently been shown in movies. Indeed the first narrative American film, The Great Train Robbery, from 1903, was a Western movie and a milestone in movie-making. And The Squaw Man of 1914 was C.B. DeMille's first movie and the first film shot in Hollywood. Westerns were very important in the development of movie-making, and the images of the cowboys and other characters from these movies were indelible for generations of viewers, not only in the U.S. but around the world. While the images from paintings and illustrations had long before established the look of the cowboys and others, it was the Westerns and how the stars dressed and used their gear that made them visual icons.




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Gary Cooper in "The Last Outlaw," 1927.

The male actors of Western movies have always been big stars. Although early stars like Tom Mix and William S. Hart paved the way, Gary Cooper became the first mega-star to go from Westerns to a variety of roles. He could play a realistic cowboy or a sophisticated lover. Amazingly, he actually grew up on a ranch in Montana and first appeared as a riding cowboy film extra. Here shown in 1927, Cooper wears the typical but genuine outfit of a cowboy - boots, spurs, six-gun, hat and bandanna. The rolled up Levis were typical too, this in the day when cotton denims shrank several inches from washing. The costume of the cowboy was heavily influenced by the Spanish and Mexican vaqueros. In fact the skills and much of the vocabulary of cowboys and wranglers were first developed by the Californio and Mexican ranchers and vaqueros.





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John Wayne from "The Big Trail," 1930.

The other tradition that influenced Western wear was the dress of the Native Americans. The American Indians in most regions made their clothing from animal skins and plant fibers. For the white fur-trappers, mountain men, and cowboys, they adapted their own clothes based on the long-lasting and adaptable buckskins of the Native Americans. The young John Wayne above wears fringed and beaded buckskins and moccasins.

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The early Western movies had been costumed mostly by the Western Costume Company of Hollywood, a huge costume rental house started specifically for outfitting the cast of the early Westerns. John Wayne and Claire Trevor are shown above in the great John Ford film, Stagecoach, in 1939. The costumes for this film were designed by the legendary Walter Plunkett. Plunkett had specialized in historical costume design, but he could do everything from designing costumes for King Kong to the first Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, as well as the hundreds of costumes in Gone With the Wind.

The costume designers were as diligent about designing Western dress as they were about contemporary or historical costume design. Here too the designing started from a script and moved on to sketches. This sketch was most likely a design for Claudia Cardinale in Circus World, 1964 (thank you to Pat for identifying this sketch). It was done by costume designer Renie.

This costume sketch was a design for a Native American woman for the un-produced film Custer's Last Stand. It was designed by Adele Balkan working with Renie for Paramount Studio. The movie was scrapped along with Paramount's other planned movies when they shut down production after almost going bankrupt from producing Cleopatra in 1963.

Here is a design by Edith Head for Katharine Hepburn in Rooster Cogburn, 1975, a sequel to
True Grit. As a veteran costume designer Head designed many Westerns during her long career.

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Western movies have become more fair in depicting events involving Native Americans. Here is August Schellenberg playing Sitting Bull in the HBO production of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, from 2007. Indian costumes have also been designed to be more historically accurate. The costumes for the movie were designed by Mario Davignon.





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Angelina Jolie, Dana Delany, and Annabeth Gish star in True Women, TV movie 1997.

 Women's clothes of the old west were very basic. Ginghams and calico prints were popular. Flour and feed sacks often came in floral printed cotton so that farm or rural women could reuse the fabric in home-sewn  garments. 

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The costumes for cowboys in modern Westerns have taken on the look of the early illustrations and paintings that Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington so accurately depicted in the turn of the last century. In this photo Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall star as cowboys in The Open Range, 2003, along with Annette Bening. The costume designing was done by John Bloomfield and Lizzie McGovern. Like in many western films, the cowboy stars wear leather chaps (pronounced shaps). And like many cowboy terms, chaps came from the Mexican term
chaparejos.

It's great to know that the new True Grit was nominated for a Best Costume Design Oscar for Mary Zophres. Although it didn't win, it was re-assuring to see a Western nominated.

Ride on!