Beyoncé has donned another pair of chaps to promote Cowboy Carter—and like jeans from Louis Vuitton’s 2024 collection, these Western-style pants seem to be inspired by Black cowboys.
On April 3, a Beyoncé fan account on X.com shared a new promotional photo of Beyoncé next to a series of photos of Black cowboys dressed in similar wooly chaps, otherwise known as “woolies,” which were originally designed for warmth, according to the Witte Museum’s exhibition titled Black Cowboys: An American Story.
The fan also shared a less practical purpose for the style via the Bullock Texas State History Museum. “When cowboys began competing at rodeo roundups in the late 1800s, they wore the narrow-legged ‘shotgun’ style chaps they already wore on the range,” the fan quoted the museum’s website. “As rodeo became more of a show in the early 1900s, competitors began wearing flamboyant ‘woolie’ chaps made from angora goat hair.”
Beyoncé paired her own woolies with an American flag bodysuit and a white cowboy hat. You can see the images here.
Aside from the latex chaps Beyoncé wore on the cover of Cowboy Carter, the 42-year-old recently modeled a pair of denim chaps from Pharrell Williams’ 2024 menswear collection for Louis Vuitton. “I feel like when you see cowboys portrayed, you see only a few versions,” Williams told GQ of the collection in January. “You never really get to see what some of the original cowboys really look like. They look like us, they look like me, they look Black, they look Native American.” According to the Smithsonian magazine, historians believe that one in four cowboys were Black.
Beyoncé in Louis Vuitton and a Stetson hat at the 2024 Grammy AwardsKevin Mazur/Getty Images
Meanwhile, Cowboy Carter was born out of Beyoncé’s own experience feeling excluded from the country music industry. “Because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive,” she wrote on Instagram March. “It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.
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