STYLE : FASHION : How the West Is Worn
One of the most popular places to strut your Stetson is just 10 miles from the skyscrapers of downtown L.A. Every Wednesday night, real cowboys and cowboy wanna-bes gather at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center to corral steers in a sport called team penning. There, Matt Merritt, team penning manager, says an experienced eye can separate the urban cowboys from the genuine article by the way they dress.
“Wrangler jeans are mandatory, and they have to be super long so when you’re on horseback, they still come down to the bottom of the boot,” Merritt says. For shirts, he shops at King’s Western Wear in Van Nuys. “Some people still have leather engraved belts, but most wear braided-horsehair belts. Custom silver or trophy buckles are the best. Broken Horn (in Baldwin Park) has a custom silver department that can make just about anything you want.”
Boots are more difficult to find. “I went into one store and asked for ropers, and they didn’t know what they were. Now I order my ropers through DaMoor’s in Glendale,” he says. Ropers, originally worn only by calf ropers, have a round toe and flat heel. Says Merritt: “If you see a pair of ropers, the guy’s legit.”
The last detail is, of course, the hat. “A rodeo cowboy will wear only one of two colors--black or silver belly. It’s OK to wear a buckskin-colored hat for work, but not to a fancy affair. Same thing with the shape. The authentic hats are the roper style, or quarterhorse crease. The outlandish, high-crown styles are out of favor.” Got that, greenhorns?
