Why are we obsessed with American West fashion?

Isabel Marant 2018

Prairie dresses and pie-crust collars, the frontier woman as pin-up: the enduring myth of the American West has made a resurgence for spring/summer 2018 and looks set to stick around. Brands including Dior, Chloé, Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, Coach, Brock, Rebecca Taylor and, for fall, Isabel Marant, have all mined the era’s layers of inspiration, trotting out equestrian details and full-skirt silhouettes, high necks and long sleeves in referential fabrications of embroidered cotton, denim and ruffles.

Westworld Season 1

Why? The obvious culprit is Westworld, HBO’s sci-fi-theme-park thriller, which has had us hypnotised since 2016 with its synthetic, Technicolor rendering of one of history’s most fascinating and complex periods.

But our Western intrigue has been simmering for some time. In her 2016 book Denim: Fashion’s Frontier, Emma McClendon, associate curator of costume at The Museum at FIT, highlighted the influence of dude ranches – destinations popularised in the 1930s for vacationers wanting a taste of cowboy life.

Calvin Klein 2018

On TV, Netflix has no end of shows exploring the genre, from Ken Burns’ documentary The West and gritty drama Godless, starring Downton’s Michelle Dockery, to the Coen Brothers’ forthcoming six-part series The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Fans of the underrated 2004 TV show Deadwood will be thrilled that a film is rumoured to be on its way. And for a literal taste of the era, you could swing by McDonald’s, which has just launched its Great Tastes of America menu (including the Tex Mex stack and the Ranch California).

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