Rockmount Ranch Wear – an American Legend

First of all, a helpful reminder: if you’re wearing cowboy clothing you technically are ranch dressing. Having lived in the yee-haw state of Colorado for the last 15 years I have been enmeshed in cowboy culture, especially since taking a job where I’m actually dressing up like a cowboy. That job has been the focus of my 6-year-long photo project.

Forget the big boys like Wrangler and Ariat: there is one clothing label that is mentioned around my place of employment, with hushed tones of reverence. Of course it helps that Rockmount is a Colorado company started back in the 1940s, and is still something of a premium label as far as most people are concerned. Its founder Jack Weil is himself a legend, being the first to put button-snaps on shirts for cowboys and having invented the bolo tie; living to 107 years, he was believed to be the world’s oldest CEO. Pictures and newspaper clippings of him line the walls alongside so many celebrities in Rockmount shirts.

Even though I live a mere 1.5-2hrs away from Rockmount by car, I hardly ever drive up to Denver; I’ve only visited the store once before and only took two pictures the last time I was there. Those two pictures though, became part of my photo project documenting the Colorado tourism industry, and I tried to expand on that theme here to a greater degree, even recreating those two pictures with color film.  Western kitsch is definitely a part of how the state of Colorado packages its heritage for mass consumption, so capturing some of that has been important to me.

I was in town for a portfolio review and one of my reviewers was just fascinated with the Western kitsch and my two Rockmount photos in particular. So in going back there, I tried to take his suggestions to heart and make this experience as pilgrimage-worthy as I could as well as get as many different angles of the store, shooting the better part of two rolls of film. And it is indeed a pilgrimage: an employee told me that Bruce Springsteen had dropped in just two weeks before I had, completely unannounced. Things like this happen often. I’m continuously surprised by how small the storefront is; most of their business is online, which is how I’ve done my shopping with them previously.

COVID really put them behind though: it’s hard for me to buy a shirt of theirs in my size without having to get on the backorder list. I was hoping that they might have a few more in-stock in their store but there was almost nothing. I was able to look through their small selection of factory seconds and find something, thankfully. Mrs. Wendy Weil told me that government lockdown restrictions forced them to completely shut down their business (including online sales) as well as their American factory, which isn’t even in the same state.

Of course they still had plenty of clothing available but like so many other companies they have offshored a lot of their manufacturing. I don’t generally buy things brand-new unless it’s made in my country, and it is encouraging to me that the overwhelming demand for Made-in-USA goods has them scrambling to keep up.

Perhaps having shirts used in film & TV productions like Yellowstone has contributed to this as well. Either way, Rockmount is pretty prominently in the public consciousness for those who know what to look for, and their wall of celebrity pictures is quite extensive.

They do of course sell more than shirts but I’m not sure what counts as “theirs,” as it’s not like they own a factory to make hats, boots, and baby onesies (and yes they do sell those).

At the end of the day, Rockmount is a company keenly aware of its own heritage and looking to preserve it, to the point where they even have their own museum looking back through the decades.

Buying one of their shirts is my way of buying into that heritage, and also connecting more closely to my adopted state. And making sure that I blend in well when I’m out taking pictures of all the other cowboys.

I will say that I don’t generally shoot much color film, but when I do I prefer Cinestill 800T for its better rendering with indoor light.  Rockmount’s front windows let in plenty of daylight so a few of these have a Wratten-85B filter attached to the lens: quite a handy thing to have when shooting tungsten-balanced film!

Technical note: all images were taken with the Nikon F4 and the 35mm f/2 AI-S Nikkor lens. Film used was Cinestill 800T and Kodak T-Max P3200. Lab developed. Scanned/finished by myself using the Pakon F335 and Affinity Photo.

You can find my the sum total of my work at The Resurrected Camera or for strictly photo project work (which is all-cowboy all the time), my Instagram: @thefamouspdog.

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