Upon getting off the bus and walking into Cheyenne Frontier Days (One of the largest rodeo events in the United States), I was struck by the apparent lack of cowboy hats, as I expected to encounter a sea of them immediately. However, my expectations were soon met, as after leaving the carnival ride area, hats upon hats upon hats entered my view. From tourists to natives, cashiers to cowboys, the iconic silhouette of a cowboy hat was everywhere. Not all cowboy hats are made equal, though, which is what I will be diving into here.
On the lowest tier of the cowboy hat hierarchy are people like me, those who bought their hats that day and clearly have no idea how to wear them. For instance, after buying mine at Boot Barn, a chain western wear store, I put the hat on backwards, not realizing the clearly defined front and back profiles. Additionally, looking around, there were many others with the same model of hat, demonstrating outs as mass-produced ones that are meant for tourists or as “baby’s first cowboy hat.” That being said, I do enjoy my hat and wish to learn more about the process and style of cowboy hats, propelling me into the next tier: hat-banders.
A hat band is a fairly simple concept: a strip of cloth or some other material wrapped around the base of a hat. The basic, off-the-shelf cowboy hats have a simple black string around the base to provide some color other than tan and break up the shape. A more experienced wearer of a cowboy hat removes the simple black band and replaces it with a different, more stylistically complex one. These new bands can be leather, horsehair, woven textile, or any other material that can wrap a hat to change the shape. The most common one for men that I spotted was a simple brown leather wrap with small silver ovals to add some more color. For women, there was far more variety, with some having gemstones and others favoring a more muted Native American patterned weave. These accessories were always spotted on the next group of hats: felt and leather.
The base cowboy hat is made out of a woven straw covered in a lacquer to maintain its shape, helping a new wearer not have to worry about maintenance. Felt and leather hats demand upkeep, with re-steaming and special materials being applied so that they maintain that distinctive look. These hats are far more reminiscent of that Hollywood cowboy look, with browns and blacks dominating the color scheme, similar to Clint Eastwood’s old western movie appearances. These hats are expensive to boot, often starting around $300 and only going up from there, due to the materials and their iconic look. The people I spotted in these looked like true cowboys or ranchers, with worn jeans, a large belt buckle, leather boots, and a pearl-snap shirt. The top tier wears the same hat as this one, but the difference is in their employment and characteristics: the rodeo star.
From the Steer Wrestlers to the Bronc Riders, the rodeo stars are all adorned in custom-crafted cowboy hats. Almost a requirement for the profession, their wearing of the hat pays homage to the ranch hands and cattle drivers of the past. The hat is a requirement for the role, an iconic piece for the embodiment of the modern West.
From all of these observations and rankings, my main takeaway is that it is the subtle art of wearing cowboy hats is based on the confidence of the person. Other pieces of wear go into someone being a proper cowboy hat-wearing individual, but it is how they go about wearing it. I wore mine with uncertainty, sure that I could be spotted as the outsider I was. Those native Wyomingites, born into this tradition, wore theirs with heads held high, confident in the fact that this hat was their crown, the mark of a westerner. Overall, while the tiers I found are a good general guideline, when it comes to cowboy hats, it is not the hat that makes the man, but the man that makes the hat.