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The Dude is Back in Town

by Phil Patton?

Tom Brokaw couldn't be at the opening of Big Sky Western Furniture because he was in Big Timber, his ranch in Montana. Bruce Springsteen, who bought $400 worth of used boots up at Whiskey Dust, Mervin Bendewald's other store, couldn't be there either, but a hundred other Western-garbed guests were, confronting a choice of champagne and sarsaparilla, offered by cowgirl hostesses, forbearing to shoot a piano player pumping out country and western -— and making it clear that dude style is back. Again.

Just when it looked safe to leave the ranch house, the outlaws have circled and returned, like Clint Eastwood in "The Unforgiven." After seeming to have vanished like the iguana atop the Lone Star Cafe or Ronald Reagan to Santa Barbara, Calif., dude style was quietly preparing a comeback.

The new dude style is led by a generation of younger designers, like Katy K., who have begun to flourish somewhere between the traditional Western wear suppliers, like Rockmount, and mainstream apparel houses. Western styles have shown up in lines from DKNY and Ellen Tracy. Hot Sox now offers designs with the patterns found on a spotted steer, a pinto horse and a red bandana.

At Big Sky, in SoHo, they show how to dress up an apartment as a ranch house. It's the West as shadow theater, silhouetted against an eternal sunset. Cast-iron and rawhide chandeliers hang from its ceiling, blankets and the odd stirrup or two from its simulated log walls. Lamps bearing wildlife scenes by Steven Blood, just like those in the Old Faithful Inn, lend romantic light.

The Wyoming-style furniture of J. Michael Patrick and his New West furniture company is deployed in "roomscapes." In the tradition of Thomas Molesworth, who created the interiors of ranch houses for wranglers like Robert W. Woodruff of Coca-Cola, the publisher Moses Annenberg and Dwight D. Eisenhower, it combines Chimayo blanket upholstery, lodgepole sidetables, recliners adorned with moose antlers and twisted lamps of burl.

Like the lead-filled outlaw who staggers improbably forward, six-gun blazing, dude style just keeps coming. Its return to New York began with the settling of the Hudson Street block (between 10th Street and Charles streets) where in 1989 Mr. Bendewald opened Whiskey Dust, and Sherry Delamarter creatd the Cowgirl Hall of Fame restaurant.

Working on the theory that the best way to dress up as a cowboy is to dress up in things a real cowboy wore, Mr. Bendewald developed the Montana Broke line of used jeans, imported from that state and accompanied by a guide explaining the origins of all the rips and wear marks. The likes of Eric Clapton and Bon Jovi have paid $70 a pair. Also among his stock of what Mr. Bendewald unabashedly calls his "Western oddities" are old boots, longhorn-and-cactus-patterned "trash belt buckles," Gene Autry pocket knives, Little Joe beef jerky and a candy called Happy Trails, endorsed by Roy Rogers.

The word "dude" is at least a century old, but no one is quite sure where it came from; the best guess is some joking play on "duds." It is to real cowboy clothing as rodeo is to the real round-up. It glitters with little ironies likethe rhinestones on a country and western star's suit.

Dude is not about authenticity of detail; its about authenticity of yearning. From Patsy Montana's 1935 song "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" to Pam Houston's book "Cowboys Are My Weakness," it has always been about distance and desire. As the narrator of Ms. Houston's title story puts it, "I've always had this thing about cowboys, maybe because I was born in New Jersey."

In the 60's, dude was generalized, especially in African-American street lingo, to mean a fancy dresser. In the 80's, it became further abstracted as a synonym for "guy," a linguistic turn that suggested cowboydom as the archetypal core of male behavior.

There is no more striking form of dressing up like a cowboy than dressing a girl up like a cowboy. The new dude style pushes the cowgirl to the forefront. Cowgirls have been around nearly as long as cowboys -— Annie Oakley shot and roped for audiences beginning in 1885—but they have been recast in the light of neo-feminism. Gail Gilchriest's "Cowgirl Companion," offering cowgirl history, poetry, recipes and dating tips, is scheduled to come out in June from Random House. Cowgirl makes cowboy problematic: today's cowgirl no longer necessarily wants to be a cowboy's sweetheart. Witness the success of cowgirl figures like K. D. Lang.

Authenticity in cowboy land has always been relative. Buffalo Chips in SoHo accents its line of new boots with old Randolph Scott film posters, genuine deputy marshal badges and risque cowgirl prints from the 40's. Dakotah fabrics recently signed a licensing deal with Roy Rogers for embroidered pillows, tufted chenille and other items. Rogers was a boyhood idol of the company's president, George Whyte.

But nothing satisfies like owning a real piece of the old West—a vintage saddle or a pair of spurs. Prices for a pair of prime McChesney's spurs, the most distinguished name among the strap-and-rowel set, have leaped from $500 to $1,500 in the last couple of years, said Lee Jacobs, a collector and expert in the field. Ads for the National Bit, Spur and Saddle Collectors Association in the antique tabloids proclaim "rapid growth eastward." Guns are also prized -— even rusty ones like the the six-shooter depicted in Michael Friedman's book, "Cowboy Culture" (Schiffer Publishing), with notches on its barrel and the hammer locked as if it had been dropped in a gunfight.

Collectors of cowboy artifacts pursue their quarry with all the fervor of Mr. Eastwood himself. A couple of years ago, Mr. Jacobs said, a father and son-in-law were caught up in a dispute over a collection. They proved their commitment to authentic western values by shooting each other dead.

WHEN EASTERNER MET WEST

Circa 1850—John B. Stetson, a Philadelphian, goes west to cure his tuberculosis, discovers cowboy hats.
1883—Theodore Roosevelt goes west. Equipped with a Bowie knife from Tiffany, he takes up ranching in South Dakota and becomes an object of derision, called "Four Eyes." When he sucker-punches a cowboy in a saloon, derision turns to respect and he gets a new nickname: "Old Four Eyes."
1879—Struthers Burt, a former Princeton professor, opens the first dude ranch, outside Jackson Hole, Wyo. The Bar BC guest list resembles the New York Social Register.
Circa 1885—William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody figures out there's more money to be made in Wild West shows than in the Wild West. He tours Europe, introduces the cowgirl, personified by Annie Oakley.
1903—The first Western, "The Great Train Robbery," is shot near Dover, N.J.
1929—Georgia O'Keefe makes first trip to Taos, N.M., discovers the beauty of a cattle skull and brings it back to New York to paint, unwittingly creating the single most widely dispersed cliche of dude decor.
1935—The singing cowboy, Gene Autry, first warbles on screen. Patsy Montana sells a million copies of "I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart."
1936—Lon Smith, in "Dude Ranches and Ponies," pushes the term "dudeens" for females. It fails to stick.
1946—Jack Weil founds Rockmount Western Wear in Denver, introduces first commercially produced snaps on western shirts.
Late 1940's—Victor E. Cedarstaff, of Wickenburg, Ariz., claims to have invented the bolo tie after his horse runs into a tree.
1957—Ford introduces the Ranchero, half pickup truck and half car, the ultimate dudemobile; Chevrolet's El Camino follows two years later.
1959—"Gunsmoke" is top-rated television show.
1967—Roy Rogers's horse, Trigger, dies and is stuffed and put on display at Rogers Museum, Victorville, Calif.
1969—"Midnight Cowboy" and "The Wild Boy" revise the 60's rebel into existential cowboy.
1973—Henry Kissinger tells Oriana Fallaci that he thinks of himself as a cowboy.
1976—David Allan Coe, the "mysterious rhinestone cowboy" and ex-con, makes it big in Nashville.
1977—Ralph Lauren visits Denver on business and is disappointed with the clothes. The next year he introduces his western-wear line. He buys a ranch in Colorado, has cabin torn down in mid-construction because the logs are too small. He chases down a vintage pickup truck and immediately buys it from its owner.
1978—Billy Martin's western-wear store opens in Manhattan.
1979—National Bit Spur and Saddle Collectors Association founded in a livestock building at Larimer County fairgrounds, Loveland, Colo.
Late 70's—The dude cowboy, redux. Livingston, Mont., becomes a Big Sky Bloomsbury, with the writers Tom McGuane?, Richard Brautigan and William Hjortsberg?, the actors Jeff Bridges?, Peter Fonda? and the painter Russell Chatham? in residence.
1980—"Urban Cowboy" is released. Ronald Reagan is photographed in cowboy duds at his Santa Barbara, Calif., ranch. In "The Electric Horseman," Robert Redford rides through Las Vegas in a lighted suit.
1980—The Lone Star Cafe in Manhattan mounts a 16-foot-high model iguana on its roof. In Sam Shepard, the existential cowboy metamorphoses into the cowboy of New Age angst, the dysfunctional dude. "True West" premieres.
1984—Wim Wenders's "Paris, Texas" is released.
1989—The Lone Star Cafe moves uptown. The Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Whiskey Dust open on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village.
1990—Buffalo Chips—an offshoot of the New Jersey original—opens in SoHo, selling boots, jewelry and memorabilia.
1991—Billboard magazine's new Soundscan system sales reveals country and western sales higher than previous estimates. Garth Brooks crosses over to top of pop chart; a new generation of country stars arrives. Bruce Springsteen, who sports bolo tie on cover of "Tunnel of Love" album, buys $400 used cowboy boots at Whiskey Dust.
1992—"City Slickers" presents dude ranch as meaningful yuppie experience. Billy Crystal bonds with calf.
1993—Opening of Denim and Diamonds, on Lexington Avenue, and Big Sky, on West Houston Street. "The Unforgiven" sweeps Academy Awards. Gus Van Sant begins filming "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," starring Uma Thurman.


The New York Times?
April 18, 1993: Sec. 9: 10


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