“STYLE ICON AND FASHION PIONEER”:Beyoncé’s final fashion frontier-HO

It’s now impossible to see a cowboy hat or pair of cowboy boots and not think of her.

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s influence on fashion is undeniable, and her impact extends far beyond the confines of the Met Gala. While it’s unlikely that she will grace the event on Monday (having not attended since 2016), she remains a fashion icon in her own right.

Throughout her career, Beyoncé has showcased an unparalleled ability to command attention through her wardrobe choices. From her Renaissance world tour, where she dazzled audiences with approximately 148 distinct looks, to her film “Black Is King” and teaser video for “I’m That Girl,” where she effortlessly showcased more than a dozen outfits, Beyoncé has consistently pushed the boundaries of fashion.

What sets Beyoncé apart is her willingness to embrace a diverse range of designers and styles, ensuring that her fashion choices reflect her ever-evolving persona. Whether she’s wearing established luxury brands or championing emerging designers, Beyoncé’s sartorial selections are always meticulously curated and exude confidence and elegance.

In essence, Beyoncé is a fashion phenomenon unto herself, continually setting the bar higher and inspiring countless individuals with her fearless approach to style.

And yet for all that, despite winning a “fashion icon” award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and having her own fashion line, Ivy Park, despite a high-fashion collaboration with Balmain, Beyoncé has not really changed how people dress. It may be counterintuitive, but generally she has seemed more interested in having fashion serve her, rather than serving fashion. Spreading her influence so widely has focused attention on no single name or aesthetic save her own.

Until now. With “Cowboy Carter,” finally, her fashion and her mission have become one and the same, and the effect is industry-shifting. Even more than Taylor Swift, her fellow diva of the moment, she has determined the look of the moment.

According to a spokeswoman for Lyst, the fashion search engine, Western-related product engagement is up 59 percent year-on-year for this quarter. “We’ve seen a 51 percent increase in searches for ‘cowboy boots,’ a 31 percent increase in searches for ‘Levi’s jeans’ since this song and the album dropped and a 57 percent increase featuring the keyword ‘cowboy,’” she said. Searches for Ganni Western boots alone grew 224 percent between March and April, and searches for Y project Western jeans were up 610 percent.

Beyoncé’s embrace of cowboy culture has indeed reached new heights, transcending mere trendiness and becoming a transformative force in popular culture. While cowboys have enjoyed periodic moments in the spotlight, such as with Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and the success of shows like “Yellowstone,” Beyoncé’s influence has elevated cowboy aesthetics to a whole new level.

Through her meticulous curation of denim, plaid, chaps, and rodeo-glam elements, Beyoncé has effectively redefined the cowboy aesthetic, infusing it with her signature style and glamour. Her fashion choices, ranging from the oversized Alexander McQueen shearling on the cover of W magazine to the elegant beige Ferragamo suit and trench worn in Japan to promote “Cowboy Carter,” reflect a deliberate and calculated effort to embody the essence of the Wild West in a contemporary and chic manner.

What sets Beyoncé apart is not just her ability to wear cowboy-inspired fashion, but her skill in orchestrating a comprehensive and cohesive visual narrative. From her social media posts to her website, every aspect of the “Cowboy Carter” rollout has been meticulously curated, creating a campaign that transcends mere promotion and becomes a cultural phenomenon in its own right.

In essence, Beyoncé’s cowboy transformation is not just a fashion statement; it’s a cultural revolution that redefines the boundaries of style and influence.

Beyoncé, in a bejeweled Gaurav Gupta jacket and over-the-knee boots, with Tina Knowles at the Luar fall 2024 show at New York Fashion Week in February.Credit…Nina Westervelt/WWD, via Getty Images

“She has mainstreamed country as a genre, and mainstreamed its aesthetics,” said Riché Richardson, a professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University who has taught a class called Beyoncé Nation.

Marni Senofonte, the stylist who has worked with Beyoncé for about 15 years and created many of the “Cowboy Carter” visuals, agreed. “This is worldwide,” she said — even in the context of previous Beyoncé fashion statements, like the H.B.C.U. moments of Coachella, the Black Panther ode of “Formation” and the puffed sleeves of “Lemonade.” “It’s easily the biggest trend response we’ve seen.”

“Moreover,” she continued, “Beyoncé’s pivot into country music has served as a catalyst for a nearly 45 percent uptick in the prominence of Western and country styling within the broader fashion landscape.”

Beyoncé and Jay-Z at the Grammy Awards in February.Credit…Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

It has become hard to see anyone in cowboycore — Kim Kardashian in a cowboy hat at the Super Bowl, Venus Williams in cowboy boots doing a talk on art collecting at the Met — and not think you are seeing the Beyoncé effect IRL.

Part of this, Ms. Senofonte pointed out, has to do with access. Everyone can buy jeans, but not everyone has the ability to get, say, Jonathan Anderson of Loewe to design them a bodysuit as he did for Beyoncé during her Renaissance tour. (And not everyone wants to wear a bodysuit.) Part of it has to do with the fact that, Ms. Richardson of Cornell said, Beyoncé has been seeding the ground for a while.

“‘Renaissance,’ ‘Formation’ and ‘Lemonade,’ to different degrees, built on questions and challenges related to national identity in terms of belonging,” Ms. Richardson said. “This is a more mass expression of that project.”

But the Beyoncé effect also has to do with a broader reclaiming of certain powerful mythology for women at a time when they seem to be increasingly disempowered. After all, as Ms. Senofonte pointed out, Beyoncé called her album “Cowboy Carter,” not “Cowgirl Carter” — and she does nothing by accident.

She has been wearing chaps, cowboy hats and bolos, the semiology of the masculine West, rather than prairie skirts and ruffly blouses, their feminized equivalents. The associations she is claiming for herself have to do with deeply embedded notions of the wide-open frontier, of swagger and sweat and territory. Of freedom and manifest destiny. She’s taking the imagery of “Lonesome Dove” and “Riders of the Purple Sage,” of the Earps and Wild Bill Hickok, and inverting it.

It is not a coincidence that she has been seeding Pharrell Williams’s Western-influenced Louis Vuitton men’s collection throughout her promotional juggernaut. She is assuming the camouflage of the guys. As it happens, Mr. Williams is listed as a contributor on “Cowboy Carter,” and given the time it takes to make an album and to make a collection, chances are he began working on the music before working on his show. Which suggests that the “Cowboy Carter” aura may well have influenced his designs in the first place.

“It’s a challenge to the conventional masculinity associated with that genre,” Ms. Richardson said of Beyoncé’s all-cowboy hats all-the-time styling. “She’s broadening the notion of who can wear this.” And she’s showing everyone how to do it at the same time, using accessories to douse any outfit in the attitude of the frontier. That’s political in the broadest and most inclusive sense of the word.

While it would be a joy to see how she would have given a Western spin to “The Garden of Time,” the Met Gala’s dress code, it’s also possible to conjure up a prickly pear-festooned cowboy hat of the imagination. She hasn’t just earned her spurs. She’s given everyone else permission to wear them.