Young Dwight Yoakam and the Urban Cowboy Look

Late one night, and down a deep dark YouTube rabbit hole, I stumbled on an old performance by the then-young Dwight Yoakam.

Drawn in by the ease with which he wore his ten-gallon hat, mesmerized by his bedazzled thunderbird-embroidered jacket, and entranced by the concho-emblazoned skin-tight Levi’s 517s over cowboy boots, I spent a good couple of minutes absorbing his interpretation of Western style before realizing that it was because he was a white boy from Kentucky playing a much-beloved and melancholy Norteño-style music that had sealed the deal for me.

With a quick Google search, I found a pretty recent GQ article with Dwight wearing a familiar look - the first words on-screen: ALL CLOTHES, DWIGHT’S OWN. I had to know what was behind this fellow LA transplant’s perfectly distilled style that he could still be wearing the same exact clothing decades later.

After a good hour of digging through troves of images and videos, I landed on the fact that Dwight simply knows who he is, what his music represents to the people around him, and dresses the part without any catering or pandering to an audience. OK, it’s definitely pandering, but you can tell he enjoys dressing like this, and if nothing more his look has helped cement him in the canon of the country-western “hillbilly” music he helped pioneer. None of it feels forced because none of it is. While I would hardly describe myself as ever having been a fan of country music, Dwight’s drawn me in and inspired me with the simplicity of his trademark look. The music honestly ain’t bad either.