How Cowboycore Became the Iconic Aesthetic of 2024

It would be hard to find a more potent symbol of America’s ruthless self-determination and wanderlust than the cowboy. From the wide-brimmed hat and skinny jeans to the snap-button shirt and boots—it is an instantly recognizable cultural figure. Better yet, it can be interpreted in multiple ways.

It’s no surprise, then, that the cowboy has become the dominant archetype of 2024—an election year, no less! Even if it doesn’t always look exactly like what you remember. Consider Beyoncé’s latest cover on her country-inspired album Carter the cowboy: flowing silver curls, red, white and blue hair, sitting side-saddle on a majestic white horse.

Then there’s Pharrell Williams’ fall/winter 2024 collection, his third as Louis Vuitton’s menswear artistic director: washed denim with Western appliqués, Nudie suits, fringed gaucho pants, Western shirts, bolo ties, and grommeted cowboy boots and hats in luxe leather. The show’s casting, a diverse group largely comprised of Black and Native American men, added a very specific and sly political dimension to Williams’ grand vision. “When you see cowboys represented, you only see a few versions,” Williams said backstage before the show. “You never really see what some of the original cowboys looked like. They looked like us, they looked like me. They looked Black. They looked Native American.”

The image may contain an adult animal, a horse, a mammal, clothing, a hat and an Andalusian horse

The cowboy has been worming his way into our brains in recent years. There’s the swashbuckling western melodrama of Yellowstone, the country’s most popular television series. Last year, the conservative (and GQ Antwaun Sargent curated the show “Cowboy” with artist and former fashion designer Helmut Lang, which explored the art world’s fascination with ranchers. Meanwhile, masked gay musician Orville Peck has for years been queering the cowboy, making inroads into the notoriously straight country music scene, picking up a thread that The Secret of Brokeback Mountain started. This cowboy really contains multitudes, my friend.

According to Tyree Boyd-Pates, associate curator of Western history at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, the cowboy remains such an essential archetype precisely because of this interpretive flexibility. “Within this archetype, there are intertwined questions of race, democracy, manifest destiny, slavery, erasure, and politics,” he said. “By examining it, we can better understand the nation’s priorities and explore its inspirations. These questions make the subject compelling because they reveal the many valuable layers that contribute to our national identity, particularly during this political period.” Boyd-Pates notes that historians estimate that one in four cowboys were African American, and that the contributions of Beyoncé and Pharrell are just the latest additions to the canon—he fondly recalls Will Smith’s 1999 “Wild Wild West” music video as his first interaction with the idea of black cowboys.

As Boyd-Pates points out, it’s no coincidence that cowboys are particularly relevant in the run-up to an election—one that, we’re told, marks an existential turning point for America. The question of what an “American” looks like is a not-so-subtle undercurrent running through the country’s psyche right now. “I think there’s no denying that populism has taken over our politics lately,” says Michael Fisher, vice president of menswear at Fashion Snoops, a trend forecasting firm. “And even the hat of choice at the Republican National Convention was a cowboy hat. For some reason, that particular hat symbolizes rugged individualism and a free, wandering spirit.” The fact that Beyoncé and far-right Republicans are both claiming cowboycore as their own shows just how deep its symbolism runs.