How Cowgirl Couture was born

It's Cowgirl Couture season, y'all. From Lucchese boots to wide-brimmed Stetsons, this fall's high fashion is all about rodeo wear. Learn more about Cowgirl Couture here.

The camera slowly pans to Beyoncé wearing sunglasses and a sleek black cowgirl hat. Her arm rises to reveal the majestic drape of the fringes of her leather jacket, a look that's both glamorous and swaggering. This is a video teaser for Renaissance, and Western clothing conveys the strength and power of a woman who decides.

The cowgirl aesthetic has lived many lives. It was by turns down-home and glitzy, old-timey and transgressive, wise and provocative. The Cowgirl is a romantic mythology that has changed over the generations, but it's also a true story about one of the greatest shifts of the modern age: a story of women making their way through a world built for men.

At the end of the 19th century, an alcoholic hiker born Martha Jane Cannary also posed for the camera. Like Beyoncé, she wore a fringed suede jacket and a cowgirl hat. But Cannary was not a glamorous celebrity. She was a foreigner who rode with the male cavalry, and the shocking image - a woman dressed as a man - helped her story catch fire in dime novels that vastly exaggerated her exploits and made her the one of America's first female legends: Calamity Jane. /p>

Photo shoot for Beyoncé's seventh studio album, Renaissance.

CARLJIN JACOBS