Denim: Marfa's Unofficial Uniform

Cowboys, cowgirls, artists, movie stars, locals, and visitors all share one common thread: denim. I've worn blue jeans for as long as I can remember. Growing up in Texas, it feels like denim is woven into the very fabric of my life. My grandparents wore jeans and pearl-snap shirts, the kind of clothes that didn’t need explaining. They were just what you wore.

The Versatility of Denim

I started wearing jeans at a young age and never really stopped. Over the years, I’ve tried countless brands, cuts, and styles, but I always circle back to Levi's. Depending on the day, I might slip into a pair of 527s, 501s, or 510s. Different fits for different moods, jobs, and versions of the day. This versatility may explain why I love denim so much.

A good pair of jeans can be practical without sacrificing style. They’re comfortable, durable, and can be dressed up or down. They work with boots, sneakers, T-shirts, or jackets. They can get dirty and clean up well. Unlike most things we buy, a good pair often gets better with age. Somewhere along the way, jeans became my uniform.

Before the Cowboy, There Were Vaqueros and Vaqueras

Before we dive deeper into blue jeans, let’s clear something up about cowboys. The iconic American cowboy didn’t just appear from a Hollywood Western. Long before cowboy culture became a recognizable symbol, Mexican vaqueros and vaqueras were working cattle from horseback. Their techniques and customs laid the groundwork for what we now associate with ranching in Texas and the American West.

The influence runs deeper than we might realize. The Texas State Historical Association notes that Anglo ranchers borrowed heavily from Spanish and Mexican traditions. Over time, the distinctions blurred. Saddles, chaps, lassos, and stock-handling techniques with Hispanic roots became so commonplace that people stopped thinking of them as anything but Texan.

This story is especially significant in a place like Marfa. The border is nearby, but the cultures on either side have never acted as if a line divides them. Knowledge, food, language, families, and traditions have flowed through this landscape for generations.

A Ranch Outside Marfa, 1939

In May 1939, photographer Russell Lee arrived at the Walking X Ranch near Marfa while working for the Farm Security Administration. His photographs aren’t staged images of the romantic American West; they are documentation. Men and women going about ranch life, riding horses, rounding up cattle, branding calves, and preparing meals.

The Library of Congress holds over a hundred photographs from Lee’s time around the ranch, specifically identifying Mexican cowhands among his subjects. One photograph is titled "Mexican cowboys washing up after roundup. Cattle ranch near Marfa, Texas." Another shows Mexican boys branding a calf.

What I love about these photographs is their authenticity. Nobody seems interested in creating an aesthetic. They are dressed to work. Boots, hats, work shirts, denim, and durable trousers. The clothes make sense because the place demanded them.

Then Hollywood Came to Town

Fast forward to the summer of 1955 when Hollywood arrived in Marfa—not quietly. George Stevens brought Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and a small army of cast and crew to film Giant. The Texas Film Commission describes the production as an invasion of tiny Marfa for the summer. Much of the cast and crew stayed at the Hotel Paisano, where Stevens screened daily footage in the ballroom. Locals drove out to the Evans Ranch to watch filming on an open set.

Imagine Marfa in 1955. Ranchers and local families going about their lives while Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean were suddenly having drinks down the street. It still sounds like Marfa today.

And then there’s Dean. His character, Jett Rink, starts as a ranch hand and eventually becomes an oilman. The visual language surrounding him is unmistakably Western: boots, work shirts, hats, and denim. By then, something important had happened to jeans. They were still work clothes but were also becoming something cooler.

Hollywood helped transform denim from a garment worn by miners and ranch hands into a symbol of the American West. Levi Strauss's archives trace this transition through Western films, including John Wayne wearing 501s in Stagecoach in 1939. Jeans evolved from practical clothing to a cinematic shorthand for the cowboy.

Then the Artists Showed Up

A couple of decades later, another outsider arrived: Donald Judd. He moved from New York to Marfa in 1971. Judd acquired buildings and land, including parts of the former Fort D.A. Russell, and created permanent installations, ultimately helping to establish what became the Chinati Foundation. Marfa gradually transformed into an international destination for contemporary art.

It was an extraordinary change. A railroad stop turned ranching center turned military town was becoming a place where people traveled thousands of miles to experience contemporary art in the desert. Yet, look through photographs of Judd in Marfa, and you’ll notice something familiar: blue jeans.

In a Laura Wilson photograph from 1993, Judd stands in front of his 15 works in concrete at Chinati, with the West Texas desert stretching behind him. One of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century, and yet, he’s wearing denim.

Marfa Reinvented Itself Without Completely Changing Clothes

That’s what keeps drawing me back. The vaquero traditions shaped the cowboy. Workwear became fashion. Ranch country transformed into an art destination. Yet, the same basic clothes kept moving between these worlds.

Marfa has never become just one thing. It’s a melting pot of ranchers, Mexican-American families, artists, Border Patrol agents, architects, musicians, gallery owners, bartenders, writers, hotel workers, designers, filmmakers, and tourists. People who moved here thirty years ago and those who arrived yesterday are all part of this tapestry.

Marfa just keeps adding layers, and blue jeans move effortlessly between nearly all of them. We’ve said before that Marfa has no dress code. Turns out we were only half right. There’s no rulebook, but there’s definitely a uniform.

Hollywood Comes Back for Its Clothes

Hollywood never really stopped looking toward Marfa. In 2006, two films were being shot around Marfa at the same time: No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Both would eventually compete for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The Texas Film Commission confirms that the two productions were simultaneously using the Big Bend region around Marfa during the summer of 2006.

It feels almost comically appropriate. Marfa wasn’t content hosting one bleak masterpiece about questionable decisions in the American West; it needed two.

No Country, Same Jeans

No Country for Old Men takes us to West Texas in 1980. Llewelyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin, isn’t dressed like a romanticized Saturday matinee cowboy. He looks like a guy who belongs in West Texas. Boots, Western shirts, and jeans. Portions of the movie were filmed around Marfa and Big Bend National Park, including the memorable dog-chase sequence.

What interests me isn’t the exact brand or cut of Moss’s jeans. It’s that decades after Giant, filmmakers are still reaching for the same visual vocabulary to convey something about a person and a place. The clothes against this landscape tell us everything we need to know: Western, practical, independent, and a little dusty.

There Will Also Be Blood

Meanwhile, a few miles away, Paul Thomas Anderson was using the same landscape to travel even further back in time. There Will Be Blood tells the story of turn-of-the-century oilman Daniel Plainview. The production filmed around Marfa and nearby Shafter during the summer of 2006.

Daniel Day-Lewis’s Plainview occupies an earlier version of the West than Llewelyn Moss. He wears heavy work clothes, boots, hats, and suspenders. Clothing designed for labor.

Here’s where it gets wonderfully circular. Marfa’s landscape was being used to recreate an earlier American West while, nearby, another production was using that landscape to recreate West Texas in 1980.

There’s a famous story from the productions that smoke from There Will Be Blood’s burning oil derrick drifted into the Coen brothers’ view, forcing No Country for Old Men to abandon a day of filming. One movie’s West literally drifted into the other movie’s West. Even by Marfa standards, that’s a competitive art scene.

The Great Denim Equalizer

Walk around Marfa today, and the costume changes continue. You’ll encounter two people wearing remarkably similar faded jeans. One pair may have spent the last decade fixing fences, while the other may have hung in someone’s vintage collection for years before being purchased for a pretty penny.

Both somehow look completely appropriate. I don’t think one is more authentically Marfa than the other. That’s the interesting part. We like using clothes to figure people out: cowboy, cowgirl, artist, local, tourist, rancher, designer. But Marfa is unusually good at making that exercise unreliable.

The person in dusty Wranglers might own cattle or a gallery. The woman in boots and a pearl-snap shirt might have grown up nearby or just arrived. The person who looks like an artist might be fixing a fence later, and the person fixing the fence might very well be an artist. Marfa lowers the accuracy of judging books by their covers considerably.

Some Patina Is Earned. Some Comes That Way.

Another reason denim belongs here is that it ages well. Good denim gets more interesting as you live in it. The color changes, creases appear, and pockets leave outlines. Maybe something gets torn and repaired. Eventually, a pair of jeans becomes a record of the person who wore them.

The fashion industry figured out how to manufacture this process: stone washing, sanding, distressing, whiskering, and strategically placed holes. We’ve industrialized looking like we’ve been through some things. It’s objectively funny, but it makes sense. We like things with character.

Marfa understands that. Adobe cracks, steel oxidizes, leather darkens, and paint fades beneath the West Texas sun. Old buildings acquire scars, and dust settles on everything almost immediately after cleaning. Things don’t necessarily become less beautiful here because they show their age; sometimes that’s when they become interesting. Jeans understand the assignment.

From the Ranch to Vogue

In 2016, Vogue published a guide for city dwellers traveling to Marfa. Think about the journey we’ve taken. Mexican cowhands working cattle outside Marfa. Russell Lee photographing ranch life. James Dean making the Western look cool. Donald Judd standing among concrete works in jeans. Josh Brolin wandering through No Country for Old Men.

And now Vogue is explaining Marfa to New Yorkers and Angelenos. This little West Texas town traveled from ranch country to an international fashion and design destination without actually moving anywhere. That’s the versatility of the place—and perhaps the versatility of denim.

The Uniform I Didn't Know I Was Wearing

This brings me back to my own closet. I didn’t start wearing jeans because of Marfa. If anything, the story runs the other direction. I grew up in Texas, surrounded by denim and pearl snaps. My grandparents wore them, and I wore jeans as a kid. I experimented with various brands, cuts, and styles, but I always circled back to Levi's: 501s, 510s, 527s, depending on my mood and what the day requires.

Maybe that’s what I’ve always liked about denim. It adapts. Dark or faded, straight, slim, or bootcut, new or old, pristine or patched, boots or sneakers, work or dinner. The jeans don’t ask whether you’re headed to a ranch, a gallery, a job site, a bar, or somewhere in between. They just go.

Marfa has a similar quality. It has spent generations absorbing different people, cultures, occupations, and ideas without ever becoming just one thing. Ranching and contemporary art don’t merely coexist here; they’ve become parts of the same identity. Mexican and Anglo traditions have overlapped for generations.

An adobe building can contain something extremely old or something extremely new. Pickup trucks park beside rental cars. Hollywood can turn the landscape into 1950s Texas, 1980s Texas, or turn-of-the-century California. Someone can spend the morning working cattle while another person contemplates the relationship between a concrete box and desert light. Eventually, they may end up standing next to each other, ordering a beer—possibly wearing the same jeans.

The Common Thread

Maybe calling denim Marfa’s unofficial uniform is taking things a little too far. Marfa tends to resist anyone declaring what it is. That’s probably one of its better qualities. But look through the photographs. Look at the ranch hands, the vaqueros and vaqueras, James Dean, Donald Judd, and Josh Brolin. Then look around town today.

The people change. Their reasons for being here change. Marfa changes. And the blue jeans keep showing up. Maybe that’s because jeans don’t belong to any one of these groups anymore. They belong to everybody: cowboys and cowgirls, ranchers and artists, locals and visitors, people who work with their hands and those who create with their minds.

There’s room for all of them here. That’s Marfa—a collection of people, histories, and ideas that shouldn’t necessarily go together, but somehow do. And maybe that’s why I feel so comfortable here. I didn’t come to Marfa looking for a uniform. Turns out I’d been wearing it most of my life.

Until next time, Becca and Rob