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22 The Costume Designer Spring 2017 The contemporary research-heavy approach to Costume Design for Westerns is driven by several factors, not least of which is the need to relearn many of the skills that lan- guished while fewer Westerns were being made during the 1980s. In the early days of film, many actors and extras were themselves experienced ranch hands, sometimes hired straight off cattle ranches, and could wear their own cloth- ing. "There have always been Westerns," explains Boyd Magers, Western historian and film critic, "but not the proliferation that occurred from the '20s through the '60s. When something falls out of favor, we lose the people that made them. We lose the wranglers, the six-up drivers, and the Costume Designers that know how to do it. After that, Westerns were hard to make. When Westerns started to be made again in the '90s, you'd had maybe a 20-year stretch where they just weren't making many." Westerns drove the profits of movie and television stu- dios for decades, and provided a steady revenue stream that often sustained them. As Saturday-morning serials, many Westerns became the "must see" entertainment for a gen- eration, and early films made Tom Mix, William S. Hart, and Bronco Billy household names. Magers explains, "With the sound era came the singing cowboys, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, with even flashier clothes than Tom Mix wore." At the end of World War II, Westerns developed a harder edge and costumes became more realistic. When televisions began to appear in homes all over America, Westerns were a regular part of network program- ming. Before Netflix, Gunsmoke was the longest-running show on American television. Dozens of other Westerns like Bonanza and Wagon Train remain among the longest- running television series in history. During the same period, more than 600 European Westerns, the so-called Spaghetti Westerns, were made. But, after years of success, they fell out of favor with audiences. There were a handful of pro- ductions in the 1980s, but it would not be until millions of viewers tuned in to watch the miniseries Lonesome Dove that audiences would start returning to the genre. Films such as 3:10 to Yuma and The Hateful Eight began to coax back audiences, and now, with television shows like The Son and Westworld, Westerns have been making a steady return. How the West Was Worn How the West Was Worn The Son/AMC, Photo: Van Redin