Chaps and Chinks

The chaparral is not pretty. Nor is it what anyone would call ordinary brush. It is a tangle of scrub oak, thorny brush and woody stems that can shred a pair of pants in a single morning's work and cut a rider's legs to ribbons if he rides into it without protection. Yet it is this stubborn bush (chaparro in Spanish, itself borrowed from the Basque txapar) that gave its name to one of the most recognizable pieces in the western wardrobe: chaps, the American shortening of chaparreras.

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A garment can carry the landscape that made it. Chaps do. Their name tells you where they came from. Their shape tells you what they were for.

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A garment with no seat and no crotch. No inseam, no fabric between the thighs: chaps are nothing more than a leather shell around the legs, hung from a belt and worn over ordinary pants. What the saddle protects, the chaps do not have to cover. What the chaparral tears at, the leather takes instead. The logic is airtight: that of a tool shaped by necessity, not by any ambition to look good.

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And yet this tool became something else. It crossed centuries, cultures and thousands of miles, changing shape with every kind of country it passed through and taking on symbolism with every generation that made it its own. Until it became that rare paradox: a work garment you can recognize at a hundred yards, in an arena or on a remote Nevada ranch alike.

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What a rider wears on his legs tells you who he is, where he comes from, and what work he is getting ready for. Few pieces of leather have ever kept that promise so well.

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✦ This series is part of a larger undertaking: several themes are being explored at once, with research and writing always underway. New articles are added regularly, so come back and take a look. To keep up with everything new, head to The Gazette, which gathers the latest updates, or sign up for the newsletter to get them delivered straight to you.