Dress, the history of fashion, is the production of iHeart Radio.

With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common.

Every day, we all get dressed.

Welcome to Dress, the history of fashion, a podcast that explores a who-what-win of why we wear.

We are fashion historians and your hosts, Cassie Zachary, and April Callian.

Well, dress listeners, I hope that all of you are ready to settle up for today's episode,

which is an exploration of one of the most iconic looks American dress history has ever produced.

We are, of course, talking about Western wear.

And we all certainly know Western wear when we see it, right, Cass?

Yes, we do.

The boots, the jeans, those very distinctive yoke shirts, which oftentimes feature really gorgeous embroidery, sometimes beating pearl buttons.

Western wear has this very distinctive flair, which traces its roots to a very specific place and time in American history.

And Cass, the cultural cross-pollination of clothing styles of the American West is actually something that you are especially interested in.

And I was wondering if you'd be willing to share just a little bit about what you are up to in this sphere with our listeners.

Yeah, thank you for asking.

I mean, I think something that really fascinates me about, you know, so-called American Western wear is that, you know, in many ways it isn't American at all.

And so when you really start peeling back the layers of many of those myths associated with the so-called West, I mean, it's been so romanticized, right?

And stereotype and popular culture to the point that it almost completely masks, you know, the often violent colonial history that has in many ways shaped this country and how we dress or perceive how we've dressed in the past.

So, I mean, there's so much to talk about in relationship to this topic and something we are, of course, excited to dive into today with our guest.

Dr. Sonia Abraco, Sonia joins us to take us on a journey exploring Western wears multicultural workwear origins and how the look of the West came to be co-opted by mainstream fashion as so much does in the history of dress.

And her book Western wear post-war American fashion and culture speaks about some of those realities and mythologies surrounding the West and how cowboy and, of course, cowgirl pop culture came to be part of the American fashion fantasy in the post World War II era.

Design historian who specializes in American fashion, Dr. Abraco lives and works in New York City where she teaches at Parsons School of Design, the fashion Institute of Technology and Fordham University.

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