“I’d say in the last probably solid 10 years it’s become much more mainstream,” explains Jennifer Johnson, owner of Ruby Begonia’s, a boutique thrift store in downtown Lincoln, NE. But like a lot of those characters, the cowboy shirt isn’t going anywhere. In many ways, that captures the identity of the pearl snap shirt - a stubborn relic from a more rugged time that has been paved over by the comforts of modern day life. Movies like Hud, Brokeback Mountain, No Country For Old Men, and most recently Hell Or High Water presented them as a style worn by characters who stood pat as their worlds changed around them. Though the garish outfits worn by singing cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers have never fully returned, simpler pearl snap shirts have kept the tradition alive on the big screen. They were common among rodeo workers in the 1930s, and saw their first crossover appeal in the ’50s and ’60s, when cowboys dominated the pop culture landscape. Men laboring on ranches found them easy to remove should they get caught up in a saddle or tangled in a barbed-wire fence. Like jeans, pearl snap shirts were work clothes that rose to prominence because of function more than form. What was once viewed as a piece of outsider clothing - reserved for cattle ranchers and country musicians - were clearly a sought-after garment in Texas, meshing with a variety styles.
In my new home, the thrift stores had a whole section set aside specifically for pearl snap shirts. There, my cowboy duds were much more commonplace. The following year, I packed everything I owned (including a small collection of pearl snap shirts) into a car and moved to Austin, TX.
Eventually, I grew to love the cowboy shirt’s look and fit. I soon I found myself buying more of them. Still, HR didn’t come calling and the response to the shirt was positive. I wore my snap shirt to the office the next day and co-workers thought I was mocking the dress code. It fit and came cheap - which were pretty much my two style criteria at the time. It was on one of these missions that I saw my first pearl snap shirt. The need for nice-ish clothes that were also affordable left me scouring thrift stores. Back in 2005, I was working out of a cubicle in Nebraska with an “office casual” dress code.
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