How the West Was Dressed : Hard-working cowboys needed hard-working clothes. Today, Wah-Maker is faithfully reproducing the durable duds.
Real cowboys, growl “Slim” Jim Rodgers and “Wahoo” Allen Wah, didn’t wear polyester shirts with pearl snaps. Nor leather vests. And only sod busters wore Levi’s.
You got that right, pilgrim. Early cowhands wore what a man had to wear: uniform jackets from both arguments of the Civil War, brogans that migrated with Boston carpetbaggers, farmers’ bib overalls, cavalry slouch hats and canvas duck pants. And dress shirts that hadn’t been attached to celluloid collars since Grant’s inauguration.
Then, about 1870 and using profits from their first cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, cowboys dumped hand-me-downs and bought durable, functional duds that wrote a period fashion statement.
“Vests were worn as an outer garment because they didn’t restrict arm movement when living atop a horse,” says Rodgers, 50, who has done a ton of living atop a horse. “They were made of wool for warmth and usually had four pockets.”
For where else could a mounted cowboy pack a pocket watch, knife, tobacco pouch, a month’s pay in silver dollars, lucky bullet and tally books?
“Shirts were made of mattress ticking or sheeting because they were tough fabrics and readily available,” says Wah, 57, whose father sold such dry goods at his Indian trading post in Yuma. “Shirts were four-button pullovers to keep out wind and dust, and their tails came down to the knees.”
That was because that one garment had to work triple shifts as a dress shirt, work shirt and night shirt.
It is this knowledge and precision--as fastidious as printing fancy-dan fabrics on rollers built when the Kansas Pacific was still reaching West--that keep Rodgers and Wah saddled to success as Wah-Maker, re-creators of unisex clothing from original designs and authentic fabrics of the Old West.
Success?
* The Oscar-winning aura of “Unforgiven” came from its story, cast, acting--and the dark, grungy look of its actors. Much of that real mood and all of Clint Eastwood’s clothes, from ticking shirts to canvas pants, were by Wah-Maker.
Costumer Glenn Wright said he cast the clothes because they were “authentic, had a nice look, were sturdy . . . and to make shirts like that would have cost four times as much.”
* In the television series “Legends of the West”--two episodes down and four to air on KCBS, Channel 2--Jack Palance was and will be outfitted by Wah-Maker.
* Willie Nelson is changing his T-shirt and bandanna image with a Wah-Maker wardrobe. It will be subtitled the “Willie Nelson Collection designed by Allen Wah for QVC” and sold by the ponytailed balladeer on the home shopping channel.
* Wah is a consultant to the wildly Western image of Wells Fargo promotions. This year, he outfitted employees who staffed the bank’s Tournament of Roses Parade float which won the Governor’s Trophy for best depiction of life in California.
Among other Wah-Maker credits: Richard Gere in “Sommersby,” television’s “Young Riders,” and the ABC-TV miniseries “Son of Morningstar.” And there’s a new Kevin Costner movie in the works.
Made from 100% cotton, as were their pioneer ancestors, Wah-Maker clothes have even escaped their niche and crossed over to appear as casual wear for men and women at the beach, on sailboats and ski slopes.
“At Nordstrom we’re not considered Western clothing, but are part of the modern fashion display,” adds Wah. “At Macy’s in New York, we were between Liz Claiborne and Guess.”
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Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Rodgers says Wah-Maker are the work clothes of choice for professional, hard-herding cowboys from Oregon to California: “They like the sturdy fabric . . . also the tradition it represents.”
And that tradition, says Patrick Nicholson, period historian and a 23-year costume consultant on Western movies, couldn’t be more accurate.
“Wah’s clothes are terribly authentic, right down to their fabrics, buttons and thread work,” says Nicholson, general manager and buyer for King’s Western Wear in Van Nuys, which also supplied clothing for “Unforgiven.” “They are as original as humanly possible without going out to get the same cotton plants growing in 1878.”
All of which is an impressive stretch from one man’s idea that birthed a gamble that rebuilt a weakening apparel company into a $5-million-a-year business.
In 1988, the future looked particularly skinny for Wah, grandson of a Chinese immigrant who came to the United States in the 1880s as cook and then caterer to Northwestern logging camps.
True, he had parlayed a UCLA industrial design degree into sole ownership of Grunwald Marx, a 50-year-old Phoenix sportswear manufacturer. But he was being undersold, outmaneuvered and slowly beaten to death by Asian imports.
Wah examined this rag trade of his.
Why were world designers--whether planning automobiles, polo shirts, or toasters--looking to Europe and Japan for fashions?
Why wasn’t anybody exploring the American back yard, which had produced authentic world standards such as Zippo lighters and Harley-Davidson motorcycles--and Levi’s and Stetsons?
“So I looked at the cowboy and the West, in particular that period just after the Civil War,” Wah remembers.
That’s when Eastern kitchens wanted Western beef. So war veterans, teen-age runaways, remittance men, minor outlaws, the restless and romantic, blacks and whites, vaqueros and gandy dancers merged into the American cowboy.
The way a cowboy dressed, realized Wah, was as much a reflection of his work and times as blazers, button-down shirts and tasseled loafers are 125 years later. He researched their fabrics, fashions, functions and myths through photographs and books from the Gene Autry, Southwestern and Texas Ranger museums.
He learned frontier buttons were made of metal, glass, horn, wood or ivory. Pants were canvas, usually held by leather suspenders with a buckled, back-strap cinch because waists came only in general sizes. Bib-front shirts were common and worked as chest protectors against Montana winds and fevers that could drop a cowboy as fast as a Colt .45.
Of course, not one garment showed piped yokes and smile pockets beloved by today’s bar-stool, Cadillac, urban, Denim and Diamonds, rodeo, Hollywood and rhinestone cowboys.
“I decided I would gamble, build a whole line of totally authentic cowboy clothes and take my chances,” Wah says.
And Jim Rodgers took a chance on Wah.
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A fourth-generation Arizonan with ranching and cow punching in the bloodline, Rodgers owned a Western clothing and memorabilia store in nearby Scottsdale.
Wah came in to browse and buy a hat and boots.
Rodgers told Wah of the original Western shirts he was starting to make in South Carolina. Wah told Rodgers of the authentic Western shirts he wanted to make in Phoenix. They discussed riding and six guns, chuck wagons and silver buckles, growing up in Yuma and raising Black Angus cattle--and the myopia of a “Bonanza” generation that believed the True West was John Wayne and Rory Calhoun.
Within weeks, Rodgers had sold his store and become Wah’s marketing director.
“We agreed that we were going to do everything authentic, from cuff widths to pewter buttons,” Wah says. “We said we would make a very different look, not just a cowboy shirt but a traditional period shirt . . . a genuine fashion statement, not a costume.”
There was only a pittance--and still only $5,000 a year--for small magazine advertisements. Nothing for television commercials. But there was a momentum they could corral.
“What was going through the public’s mind at that time was ‘Lonesome Dove’ and ‘Dances With Wolves’ with the ‘Southwest Look’ everywhere . . . so it all tied together,” he adds.
Wah-Maker’s line stars shirts in institutional mattress ticking, pillow sheeting, Pima poplin and twill; prices range from $40 to $70. Some are band collared. Others show paisley swirls and Victorian wallpaper stripes printed by 19th-Century plates and rollers that will not survive one more rebuild. All look very home-made.
Vests, canvas and herring-bone tweeds, are $45 to $70. Duckins, or pants, are high-waisted and come in black or dun canvas with suspender buttons and cost $60.
Wah-Maker sells suspenders in leather, canvas or elastic. Also wild rags--scarves--in pure silk. And sawed-off, four-in-hand neckties because, says Western trivia king Wah, most cowboys wore ties whether on horseback or going courting. Even Jesse James wore a tie.
Cowboys, wranglers, and gunslingers were notoriously design-blind and unconscious of color. So their stripes went with checks, brown boots with black pants and a wool vest with a silk shirt.
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This precise lack of coordination produces Wah-Maker’s faithful look of the past.
“Take our gambler’s shirt,” suggests Rodgers. It is white, with blouse sleeves and the front pleats of a dinner shirt. “Add one of our Union blue vests with the brass Army buttons. Over a pair of Levi’s, it creates the Kevin Costner look from ‘Dances With Wolves.’ ”
Canvas suspenders, band-collar cotton shirt in a blue railroad stripe, and canvas pants with metal buttons: Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven.”
Cavalry-style, heavy twill, maroon shirt with a double row of metal buttons fastening a tunic front: John Wayne in just about any Western.
These clothes, says Rodgers, maketh a certain man.
“To be a cowboy, to cowboy, the cowboy way of doing something,” he explains. “It’s a noun, a verb and an adjective. It’s also a feeling, a mind-set.
“A cowboy is a free lifestyle--independent, tough, kind, one of the most-beloved persons of our time, who has managed to captivate the world in less than 150 years.
“That’s what our clothes have to say.”
Their labels also say the clothes were made in Yuma, Ariz. But that’s cowboy license. Wah-Maker clothes are cut and sewn in Arizona, with administrative offices in Northridge, Calif.
Wah, however, spent his childhood in southwestern Arizona, and rode bareback ponies with Yuma Indians. He has sadness for his town because Fort Grant had Billy the Kid and Tombstone had Wyatt Earp, but Yuma is remembered for little but a territorial prison on the Colorado River.
So Wah wants to put something back into Yuma by putting Yuma on Wah-Maker labels. He hopes it brings the town its Western due.
He says it certainly is more appropriate to the product than any label saying “Made in Northridge.”
Where to Buy Wah-Maker Clothes
Wah-Maker clothes are sold through catalogues, department stores and more than 1,500 Western-wear outlets in the 50 states.
* Catalogues: Shepler’s of Wichita, Kan., and Miller Stockman, Denver.
* Department stores: In some Nordstrom stores and Macy’s.
* In Southern California: Boot Barns; Bob’s Men’s Store at Knott’s Berry Farm; Disneyland; King’s Western Wear, Van Nuys; Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, Griffith Park; Broken Horn, Baldwin Park; Sam’s Western Wear, Riverside, and Out of Santa Fe, Newport Beach.
Also Hill’s Western Wear, Bellflower; Norco Ranch Outfitters, Norco; Western Frontier Shop, Farmer’s Market; Wild Bill, Oceanside; Wilson Western Wear, Solvang, and The Wharf, Ventura.
* Elsewhere in California: Golden Gate Western Wear, San Francisco; Farm Supply and Feed Store, San Luis Obispo; Carol’s Department Store, Mojave; Buffalo Shirt Co., Half Moon Bay, and The Stag Shop, Oakdale.
