Everybody’s Bolos

Igniting the spark for this intriguing research was Hannah Toussaint, a metalsmith and craft artist, a UNT alum, and a current M.F.A. candidate at the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga, who approached her professor, Ana M. Lopez, with an idea to explore the bolo tie as a symbol of adornment within the queer community. This concept soon expanded with the invaluable experience and insights of Brian Fleetwood, an assistant professor of studio art at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., and a citizen of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, alongside contributions from 27 additional artists. Together, they unveiled their remarkable findings. Entitled “Everybody’s Bolos,” the exhibition showcases the creations of 30 contemporary artists who were invited to apply their distinct perspectives to the bolo tie, reimagining this traditional accessory in fresh, innovative ways. The event was a collaborative effort, co-organised and co-curated by Ana M. Lopez, professor of Studio Art: Metalsmithing and Jewellery at the University of North Texas; Brian Fleetwood; and Hannah Toussaint.

History of Bolo Ties

The bolo tie is a relatively new and ambivalent format. It exists between a necklace and a necktie. “It is made by jewellers but not discussed as jewellery. It has existed for approximately one hundred years, which is negligible in the history of personal adornment. It is affiliated with Indigenous peoples but is not an element of their traditional dress. The liminality of the bolo tie is part of what makes it such an interesting topic to explore,” says Lopez.

Largely seen as an essential accessory for many people in Indigenous and Hispanic communities, bolo ties have also been adopted by hipsters and “appropriated by wealthy elites and politicians as a somehow simultaneously overly self-conscious performance of hypermasculinity and a cynical attempt to affect a folksy working-class persona,” according to Fleetwood. Nowadays, the authenticity of the form is trendsetting, being appropriated by fashion designers, and being driven away from its historical significance, stuck between historical eras and authentic rights to its form.

Gender/Less

To understand the bolo tie is to acknowledge its history and the role of Indigenous artists that paved the way for the present-day context of genderless and ornamental bolo ties, encapsulating the “full spectrum of human gender.”

The aesthetic of the American West, the cowboy, and the performance of the hyper-masculine by elite white men contradicts the same-sex fluidity represented by queerness in the West. Queer stories went untold, and history focused on the heteronormative narratives of the predominant male lens that “cemented” the image of the white cowboy into the public sphere, although according to Fleetwood, “the act of performing rural drag is distinct from the subversive queer gender performance of drag kings and queens in that it upholds and exploits the ‘traditional’ gender norms of American heteropatriarchy.”

Despite this visual erasure of history, Toussaint claims that there are Hispanic, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ “cowfolks” who have adopted the bolo and other Western-style ornaments, fashion elements, and uniform pieces.

Toussaint writes, “The representation of only one type of figure moving through that space and time feels like an intentional erasure of everyone who existed within—with various gender identities and presentations, and moulded the history of places we now view as triumphantly occupied by the white and straight… I am proposing the bolo as a future for genderless adornment, looking to our queer Western ancestors who found, through solitary lives often in quiet, lonely places, a way to move through the world with some kind of acceptance.”

But really, bolos are for everybody.