Bella Hadid might have been in New York – visiting the Lower Eastside Girls Club, a community center in Manhattan that provides after-school, weekend, and summer programs for young women of color – but she looked as though she could have been strolling through the rugged tablelands of south-east Colorado.
During her most recent outing, you could almost smell the whisky on her outsized leather jacket, the wood chip on her vintage Levi's, signaling a beautiful stable hand swept up in a bucolic romance with a handsome and accomplished equestrian. (That is, of course, the real-life circumstances in which Bella – who has all but liberated herself from the fashion month rat race – finds herself.)
Towards the end of last year, it was reported that the model had started dating the professional horseman Adan Banuelos. And just last week, she uploaded a carousel of images from her time at a ranch in Weatherford, Texas. She was dressed in riding boots, bell-bottom jeans, and a big-buckled belt. See also: the horseback riding competitions she has been taking part in, and the hard launch of her chestnut stallion on Instagram.
Instagram content
Bella Hadid’s not alone in looking west. Having spent the past couple of weeks in ten-gallon hats and bolo ties, last night Beyoncé announced that a country-themed follow-up to Renaissance – which she referred to as Renaissance Act II – will arrive on March 29. Two new songs – “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages” – quickly appeared online.
Even before that, there was the Barbie movie, which includes a sequence of Margot Robbie venturing deep into Los Angeles while wearing a white cowboy hat and a pink bandana. Team this with Louis Vuitton's fall-winter 2024 collection and Bella’s unexpected appearances at the National Cutting Horse Association, and you have the ideal circumstances for a Western-style revival.
This post originally appeared in British Vogue.
