Beyoncé, Dolly Parton lead Western wear fashion trend as TikTok flaunts new styles and searches for hats, boots soar online
- Beyoncé, Dolly Parton and Pharrell Williams are among celebrities taking the Western wear trend into new areas, such as more body exposure and ‘Coastal Cowgirl’
- Over the last six months, Western wear sales have grown in the EU and US markets by 101 and 41 per cent, respectively, according to Net-a-Porter
When her Cowboy Carter album dropped on March 29, with a full list of songs dedicated to the American West such as “Levii’s Jeans” and cameos with country singers new (Miley Cyrus) and old (Dolly Parton), it underscored an already obvious fact: that Beyoncé had entered her cowboy era.
This was not the African-American singer’s first rodeo reclaiming a musical genre and evoking it through her fashion.
But in a slew of looks celebrating the aesthetic, the Texas-born-and-raised singer sent online searches for Western wear to an all-time high; Google searches for cowboy hats, for example, shot up 212.5 per cent when she announced her new album in February, according to online fashion retailer Boohoo.
In January, Pharrell Williams, the singer turned men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton, transformed the label’s Paris men’s fashion week catwalk into a giant pop-up box reminiscent of a barren desert.
Models strutted out in cowboy hats, shearling, accessories made in collaboration with Native American artists, Timberland boots, and other nods to the Western aesthetic that Williams called “worker-wear”.
On a different continent, in March, veteran Indian fashion designer Rajesh Pratap Singh showed his polo-inspired collection in collaboration with Argentinian brand La Martina at Mumbai’s Mahalaxmi Racecourse.
