American Sartorial Splendor - a look back

If you're into classic (pre-"Dave & Sugar") country music and you hear the term "Nudie Suit," you think of something entirely different from what the non -C&W fan thinks of. If you didn't know better, you'd think that "Nudie Suit" was an oxymoronic term - if you're wearing a suit, how in blazes are you nude?

I saw this picture of Faron Young and it took me back to when country singers wore outfits this garish. Nowadays, it would seem they shop at the same Old Navy as you and I, but in the golden gilded era, they sported suits made by Nudie Cohn, born Nuta Kotlyarenko in Kiev, Ukraine (a city to which we already sent thanks for sending us Mila Kunis, who would look stunning in one of Cohn's get-ups!)

The fashion was for country singers to have suits made up, with lots o' sequins and flashy colors, and even to incorporate song lyrics -as Faron did above - or personal references, as Porter Wagoner did. His suits invariably showed some sort of wagon wheel leaning against a cactus or something.



Nudie prospered in this vineyard of high couture, and even now, almost 25 years since his passing, when we see pictures like this in the LIFE magazine archives, we can but gaze upon his work in awesome wonder:


(l-to-r) Webb "There Stands The Glass" Pierce, Faron "It's Four In The Morning" Young, "Little" Jimmy "Take An Old Cold Tater and Wait" Dickens, Carl "Good Deal, Lucille" Smith and Ray "Heartaches By The Number" Price cheese for you. Those were the days! (click on photo to enlarge)