The cowboy hat. The leather boots. The fringe jacket and earthy, sun-baked palette. For more than a century, Western fashion has conjured a very specific image in the American imagination, one drawn from Hollywood’s “Wild West” mythology.
The American cowboy image includes significant, often overlooked contributions from Black, Indigenous, and Mexican cultures, often portrayed exclusively as white.
But that image is being actively dismantled. And in Texas, Black designers and stylists are among those doing the most intentional work to replace it with something truer to history and more expansive in its vision of who the cowboy actually was.
The American West’s revisionist narrative often overlooks that one in four cowboys was Black. In the 19th-century frontier economy, Black cowhands contributed significantly to building the West by creating a practical wardrobe suited to their demanding work, including wide-brimmed hats, leather chaps, sturdy boots, and durable denim.
Beyond utility, this attire carried a deeper meaning. For men who had recently emerged from enslavement, the gear of a skilled cowhand was a symbol of freedom, competence, and self-determination. Many Black cowboys wore distinctively high-quality clothing precisely to announce that status, to distinguish themselves in a world that tried to render them invisible.
Filling the gap
When Dymond Taylor walked into Western fashion trade shows years ago, she was often the only one who looked like her. No Black-owned brands lined the aisles. No designs that reflected the urban-Western fusion she had been developing for years.
“I knew I wanted to create a niche brand in Houston that would fill these spaces. To bridge the gap of what wasn’t being represented.”
– Dymond Taylor, founder of B. Stone Western Wear.
“I knew I wanted to create a niche brand in Houston that would fill these spaces,” said Taylor, founder of B. Stone Western Wear. “To bridge the gap of what wasn’t being represented.”
Taylor spent a full year researching before launching her online store in 2023, attending trade events such as WESA (Western & English Sales Association) and visiting Western marketplaces. She spent months building a social media community before she had a single product to sell, growing to roughly 40,000 followers before her launch. And then Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” era arrived, accelerating everything she had built.
Her brand name, B. Stone, carries a dual identity in its very letters. The “B” stands for Black, a deliberate declaration of ownership. The “Stone” comes from her own name, Dymond. She has since dressed celebrity clients, including Bun B, K. Michelle, and GloRilla, and was featured in the New York Times in connection with the Met Gala’s Western-themed coverage.
Her signature design philosophy she calls “urban Western”, is a deliberate fusion that layers streetwear sensibility onto traditional silhouettes. The results are pieces that work as naturally on a Houston city block as they do at a rodeo. Her ready-to-wear line is also priced accessibly, a pointed response to an industry where quality Western hats alone can exceed a thousand dollars.
“I think you have the idea of the traditional Western and my idea of urban Western, and then we just mesh it together,” Taylor said. “I love the idea of keeping it traditional, but kind of adding that urban flair.”
The vision of Western GQ
Dallas-based stylist and Western GQ founder D. Rich has been making the same argument with his wardrobe for more than 25 years.
Growing up, he spent weekends with his father driving to Malacoff, Texas, to reconnect with family roots going back multiple generations. As a city kid toggling between “good clothes” for the country and back to streetwear at home, he eventually rejected the false choice entirely.
“I found a really clever way to combine both fashion, both styles, even at a young age,” he said. “As I got older, it became more stylish and luxurious.”
The result is Western GQ, what D. Rich describes as “a combination of modern fashion combined with the luxury style of Western fashion.” Where traditional Western wear defaulted to muted earth tones and utilitarian cuts, his approach weaponizes color, accessorizes boldly with scarves he calls “ties,” feathered hats, pendants, and luxury boots, and layers high-fashion sensibility over recognizably Western foundations.
He draws inspiration from Black trailblazers across history, entrepreneurs, engineers, and freedom fighters, and sees his Western aesthetic as continuous with that tradition of excellence dressed with intention.
“Your fashion says a whole lot before you even say a word,” D. Rich said. “Whenever somebody sees me, I’m dressed. I’m speaking to you, letting you know that I’m confident, that I’m sure about myself.”
His primary audience skews toward the 37-to-70 age range, established men and women who understand that appearance is a statement, not a costume. But younger audiences are watching. The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, the nation’s premier touring Black rodeo, has been selling out events faster than ever, with D. Rich appearing as a style ambassador and videographer, helping document and excite communities about dressing the part.
“Every event is sold out,” he said. “The interest of Western culture is growing, and you can see it in how people show up to these events.”
The museum keeps the roots alive
The cultural and commercial resurgence did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the product of decades of preservation work by people like James Austin, founder and executive director of the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum and Hall of Fame.
Now 24 years old and recently relocated to a new facility on Dottie Lynn Parkway near Arlington, the museum has spent a generation documenting what most American history curricula omit: That one-fourth of all cowboys were Black Americans. Its 140 Hall of Fame inductees represent the full, diverse architecture of the American West.
“It was a history that I didn’t learn as a young man, and I wish I had known about it,” Austin said. “We teach and educate our kids and the nation in regards to the importance of celebrating the first cowboys, African-American cowboys.”
Austin sees what fashion designers and stylists are doing as a natural extension of the museum’s mission, fashion as a living, wearable form of historical education. Where a museum exhibit reaches visitors who seek it out, a bold Western look on a Houston street corner, or a celebrity’s back reaches millions who never would have gone looking.
He has spent years pushing that logic into corporate boardrooms as well. Five years ago, he convinced Wrangler to sponsor his Juneteenth Festival by making a straightforward business case that when “African Americans and Hispanics dress up Western, you’re missing a market by not supporting this program.”
Wrangler came in as a title sponsor. The point was proof that Black Western culture has spending power the industry had long ignored, and that legacy brands were leaving money on the table by treating Western fashion as a whites-only aesthetic.
