Desert Sun

Over the past week I have been becoming more and more obsessed with Pinterest, the image sharing site where you can make your own online pin boards. It's really useful as over the years I have collected so many images from both magazines and online and this is a great way of gathering them all together and also finding new ones through other users. 

One board I have been working on is called Desert Sun, a combination of images of and inspired by Nudie Cohn, a Russian-born American immigrant who went by the name Nudie the Rodeo Tailor. He started his career making fanciful costumes for burlesque queens and strippers in the 1930s, but went on to dress country and western singers, rock stars and movie stars in what became his signature style of rhinestones and south-west inspired embroidery. He was the embodiment of the Rhinestone Cowboy.

I first became aware of Nudie when I saw a film made by Craig McDean and starring Amber Valletta back in 2003. It's really dreamy and beautiful and soundtracked by The Flying Burrito Brothers (Gram Parsons was a big fan of Nudie's suits). The film features Amber driving around in one of Nudie's customised cars - you can watch it here.

It wasn't until I came across a book written by Nudie's granddaughter Jamie Lee that I found out who he actually was. He was clearly so passionate about the clothes, the design and attention to detail in the embroidery is amazing. He and his wife Bobby were never seen not wearing their extravagant outfits. The picture below of Bobby in her later years standing next to the car wearing the eagle dress is so beautiful. 

As well as customising clothing, Nudie loved to customise 1950s cars with steer horns, guns, silver dollars, chrome horses and cowhide interiors. He ended up with 18 in total, which were often called on for movies, TV shows and music videos. 

These images and the rest of my boards are all on my Pinterest account which you can see here, and join up, I totally recommend it!