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FKaT3N11One year of STAR⟡MAIL already? God Loves Party Girls and Haloscope Mag are throwing a birthday party this Saturday to celebrate.
🪩 RSVP here 🪩
Caelan Reeves, Kylie Harrington, Chris Bartee, and Laura Rocha Rueda will be reading before dancing at karaoke at Seventh Heaven Bar in Bushwick. You won’t want to miss it!
Notes on bottling and selling the West. Come listen to Caelan read from this article on Saturday at Seventh Heaven Bar & Karaoke.
What Does A Cowboy Smell Like?
by Caelan Reeves
Helplessly, we dream of cowboys — the Westernwear trend of the early 2020s is well-trod thinkpiece territory by now. In the wake of this trend, as Aspen’s pseudo-cowboys drop thousands of dollars on Kemo Sabe, Western apparel is embroiled in a contentious authenticity scare. Those are fashion boots, not workboots, profess the real cowboys among us. Your Carhartt isn’t even broken in, and if it is, it’s because you bought it vintage. Me me me me more cowboy than you.
Fake cowboy finger-pointing persists as an accusation of stolen valor. Movie and real cowboys alike represent a loose collection of “American ideals”: working-class discipline, upstanding character, and patriotism. Instagram’s trad wives — another bit of thinkpiece fodder that keeps on giving — suggest that traditional, heteronormative family structures are among the cowboy dress-up rules of engagement.
But, as Young Republicans decorate their parties with images of Trump and Vance in cowboy hats, cowboy imagery has strong staying power on the other side of the aisle. From Chappell Roan’s hot pink tassels, to rhinestoned Westernwear at Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour, to the popularity of queer line dancing night at Studcountry in Echo Park, we cannot, it seems, stop dreaming of cowboys.
I, born and raised in downtown Chicago, Illinois, am surely no authority on what constitutes a real cowboy. I am perfectly situated, though, to discuss the self-sustaining niche of fake cowboy-ness, and why the Aritzia-clad young women of the coasts still feel called to wear their bedazzled cowboy hats to the club or pick up D.S. & Durga’s Cowgirl Grass on a romp around Williamsburg.
Parallel to the prominence of Westernwear on the runway and Bella Hadid being papped on her way to the rodeo is a small but notable handful of cowboy-themed perfumes released in the past few years. Fragrance operates free from the confines of authenticity-signalling with which Western apparel is concerned. Perfumery is, fundamentally, a gesture of evocation, of seeming, rather than being. As HALOSCOPE’s own Audrey Robinovitz writes in her defense of aldehydes, there is an “ innate and deeply beautiful artifice of all perfumery.” As such, the Western perfume trend is not marked by an authenticity competition like that ensuing in fashion.
Hope we see you Saturday! Before the party kicks off, revisit Kylie Harrington, Chris Bartee, and Laura Rocha Rueda's past STAR⟡MAIL columns:
