H Bar C expands country's appeal with Sunset Strip pop

For 126 years, globally renowned western fashion brand H Bar C has blended high and low culture, premium crafting and timeless rock 'n' roll flair for a history that is longer than country music's.

Thus, it allows the company and its Nashville-based employees and partners, stationed in the nearly 150-year-old Marathon Village, a former auto factory now repurposed as creative and retail space, to have the ideal take on how fashion has helped inspire the surge of country and western culture to the pinnacle of American popular culture.

Regarding that surge, H Bar C recently opened a retail pop-up on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

Among the apparel featured is an exclusive collection from renowned Nashville-based chain-stitch embroiderer and custom tailor Sarie "Jukebox Mama" Gessner.

While speaking with The Tennessean, H Bar C's Nashville-based retail sales managers Stephanie Simon, Gianni Gibson and Jacob Hillenbrand were excited about everything at the current intersection of fashion and music.

"H Bar C's fashion allows for the wearer to embrace the garment's original western ranching functionality or love it for its timeless fashion that can expand anywhere from indie rock to honky-tonk country shirting to throwing on a Bolero jacket and pants for a quick trip to the grocery store or a Sunday church visit, too," jokes former drummer Gibson, who once was a member of the rock quartet Future Thieves.

On a simple level, most of H Bar C's shirts are made not with the heavier cotton gabardine twill familiar to most western wear but with silky, eucalyptus tree pulp and environmentally friendly Tencel fabric.

In addition, the brand's desire to err on the side of form in the perpetual work-as-fashion-wear debate between form and function is notable.

Recently, the interplay between Tennessee's country music and California's western culture has achieved a cool, potentially lucrative intersection.

The Sunset Strip pop-up also offers a vibrant new chapter of a story steeped in collaborations. It started in the 1900s with Brooklyn tailors Mel Halpern and Samuel Christenfeld, who were obsessed with western clothing and English riding gear.

From the 1940s-1990s, Christenfeld's son Seymour, envisioning mega-massive appeal for their fashions, relocated the company to Hollywood and paired with iconic western wear craftsman Nudie Cohn. Everyone from singing cowboys Gene Autry and Roy Rogers to silver screen horsemen Elvis Presley, John Travolta and John Wayne sported the brand.

By 1996, Christenfeld had passed away. The brand, hindered by the North American Free Trade Agreement, which made sourcing materials difficult and more expensive, stopped production.

From 1996-2016, H Bar C was dormant.

While H Bar C had ceased to make new garments, the e-commerce-led vintage fashion industry developed into a worldwide marketplace of over 30 million people who purchased rare, re-sourced, or revived pieces. That marketplace continues to expand.

"Timeless, 80-year-old designs come with refreshing stories from both the maker and wearer that allows the garment to live a longer life than the cycle of its existence," says Simon, a former San Francisco-based filmmaker.

However, creating unique retail items that refresh vintage wear concepts at a price point lower than that of vintage resellers sparked H Bar C's resurgence — led by former Detroit-based financial adviser and investment banker Rick Stahl, who purchased the brand in 2016.

It's also where the brand's entrenchment in modern pop-cultural cool emanates.

Recent H Bar C collaborations include work with global guitar brand Gibson, Nashville-based boutique fashion brand DanielXDiamond and Los Angeles rock act Starcrawler, among others.

Gibson cites the influence of art and design icon Virgil Abloh (who died in 2021) and his belief that altering a pre-existing design by 3% would have an incredible transformative impact as key to H Bar C's growth.

Abloh's credits include repurposing Champion and Ralph Lauren clothing for his luxury streetwear brand Pyrex Vision, plus working with American sportswear brand Nike, French brand Louis Vuitton and Italian labels Fendi and Off-White. He also has collaborated with artist Takashi Murakami, musician Kanye West, and architect Rem Koolhaas.

"Culture and fashion are cyclical and H Bar C's always been able to simultaneously pivot when culture and fashion cycle," says Hillenbrand, a songwriter and entrepreneur-turned-hatmaker who has been with H Bar C for two years (he also crafts hats in-shop in Nashville).

At present, a who's who of cinema, country and rock routinely wear H Bar C apparel. The lineage runs from Johnny Depp, the Clash's Joe Strummer and Robert Plant to country-meets-rock chart-toppers Elle King, Midland and Carly Pearce exists.

Head upstairs from H Bar C's Marathon Works storefront and you'll find Gessner and musician-seamstress Jackie Straw busy at work. For the past year, Gessner's burgeoning, Nashville-based evolution from costuming work for the Lyric Stage Company of Boston and Universal Studios Hollywood, among others, has led her now to working out of space in H Bar C's offices.

Besides Elle King, many others have worn Gessner's handiwork, including Marcus King, Sierra Ferrell, and Jaime Wyatt.

Gessner shares an appreciation for diversity and inclusion with H Bar C (she's fond of pushing for plus-sized apparel's involvement in the cut-and-sew customization world).

"Fashion denies boxes," says Gessner. "Real recognizes real. And what I'm all about is bringing people authentic joy."

Gibson offers a profound yet whimsical response regarding the broader potential of H Bar C's timeless appeal converging with country and western aesthetics that are redefining global pop culture.

"Pop culture is a ride that transcends time," he says. "Walking with a foot in the past and one in the present propels you toward the future."