Student designers create Western-inspired looks to promote sustainable fashion
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DENVER — Western fashion is trending, as country music and Western aesthetics saturate popular culture. Even Beyoncé is wearing a cowboy hat and singing about denim.
But Western wear has graced magazines and runways for decades. Western fashion has been in the mainstream for the past 40 years, starting with the urban cowboy fad in the late 1970s, said Rockmount Ranch Wear president Steve Weil.
“Western wear is one of the longest running fashion directions in the world,” Weil said. “It means different things to many people. In my case, it's a lifestyle, not a costume.”
Located in downtown Denver, Rockmount Ranch Wear is a three-generation family business that has been selling and designing Western wear since the late 1940s.
Many of the iconic elements of Western wear were developed to be functional, not just fashionable. Leather — made from hide, a byproduct of the beef industry — is commonly used in Western staples such as cowboy hats, boots, chaps and saddles.
“Cow hides and buffalo hides have been used for time immemorial,” said Wiel. “They're very durable and they serve many purposes and they're a renewable resource.”
As common as leather is in Western wear, a lot of potential leather goes to waste. About 4.8 million hides rotted last year in U.S. landfills, said Jordan Kraft Lambert, director of Ag Innovation at CSU Spur.
Lambert is on a mission to promote underutilized byproducts of the beef industry, including organ meat, called offal, and leather.
She partnered with the CSU Department of Design and Merchandising to assign a class of students to create looks inspired by leather pieces loaned by ranchers across Colorado.
Models will walk in these designs in a fashion show during the annual Offal Party at the National Western Stock Show Saturday, Jan. 25.
“All of their designs were Western-inspired,” said David Russon, a design and merchandising instructor at CSU. “Some of them look very Western, some of them might not look Western at all, but they were inspired specifically by the Western piece that they picked when [Lambert] came and visited us for the first time.”
Apparel design junior Colby Zur picked a saddle to inspire his design. He chose the saddle in the hopes that it would come with a horse, and it did. The model wearing his design will ride a horse during the fashion show.
Zur designed a red leather skirt, which covers the riders’ legs like chaps, and a hooded poncho. He also created a lightweight shirt with a lace-up front, and a pair of wool pants with a suede gusset to make riding more comfortable.
“I've done a small amount of horse riding, just at my uncle's farm,” Zur said. “I wanted to make [the pants] more durable on the seat, where they're making contact and there's a lot of friction and motion.”
Colby Zur’s poncho and leather skirt will be worn by a model on a horse during the fashion show at the Offal Party. Modeled by April Kreye (and her horse, Ace.) Photos courtesy of Ella McBride.
Inspired by an intricate leather saddle, Colby Zur designed an outfit that would be suitable for horseback riding. Modeled by Dominic Foltin. Photos: Carly Rose, Rocky Mountain PBS.
Zur has family who work in the beef cattle industry in Wisconsin — he loves organ meat, especially liver — and he thought about their closets while designing his look. To him, Western wear is a combination of workwear and style.
“I think of something that's really tough and durable, but that has just any sort of slight flair to it,” Zur said. “A lot of friends that I have or family members that work in agriculture, they have all these really strong, tough clothes, but they still want to have a little bit of style so that they don't have to have outfits for going out into town and then outfits for working. They have a bit of both in one thing.”
Before this assignment, Zur hadn’t worked much with leather, but now that he’s had the experience, he wants to incorporate more of it into future designs. He enjoys working with natural materials, like wool, cotton, leather or fur, because they’re long-lasting but ultimately biodegradable, unlike synthetic fibers like polyester.
Last semester, before starting on their Western-inspired designs, Zur and his classmates worked on a “zero waste” assignment. Many of the students could fit the leftover materials from the project in the palm of their hand, Russon said.
The fashion industry takes a significant toll on the environment, which is why it’s important to teach the next generation of fashion designers to value sustainability, Russon said.
In addition to using donated leather throughout their pieces, many of the students used thrifted or upcycled materials to complete their designs.
“We're already one of the biggest waste producers on the entire planet,” Russon said. “If students are already thinking of ways now, ‘how can I be sustainable in my personal practices in creating,’ I can only hope that that will transfer when they go out into the industry, and they'll find ways to reduce their footprint on the planet.”
Type of story: News
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