The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art hosts a major exhibition of custom-made Western wear created by Indianapolis fashion designer Jerry Lee Atwood, whose flashy embroidered suits have been worn by well-known musicians and entertainers on red carpets and in music videos.
Cowboy Couture: The Fashion of Jerry Lee Atwood celebrates dazzling suits blossoming with chain-stitch embroidery that Atwood has created over his career. The exhibition of Atwood’s designs connects his work to classic country music looks and pop culture of the American West. Visitors will learn how Atwood’s work harkens back to 20th century Western-wear designers, such as Nudie Cohn and Nathan Turk, who created elaborate rhinestone outfits for country music performers, and to earlier examples of 19th century Native and vaquero attire. Cowboy Couture examines Atwood’s creative process through photographs and design sketches, and includes a vignette with items from his Indianapolis studio.
“Cowboy Couture is a stunning and unexpected exhibition that showcases how Jerry Lee Atwood has earned national and international recognition while continuing to live and create in Indianapolis, the city he proudly calls home,” Eiteljorg President and CEO Kathryn Haigh said. “His work reminds us that world-class artistic innovation isn’t limited to the coasts, it’s happening right here, in our own community.”
Inspired by the cowboy-themed costumes that country music performers wore on album covers and during onstage performances in the 1960s and 1970s, Atwood began creating Western wear, first as a hobby, then as a career. With his business partner Joe David Walters, Atwood in 2013 founded Union Western Clothing in Indianapolis to design custom-made suits for special occasions, with embroidered designs that tell the wearer’s story. Stylists for celebrities eventually discovered Atwood’s work on Instagram and began commissioning him to design suits for their clients.
Among his past celebrity clients are Post Malone, who wore an Atwood blue eagle-talon suit at the 2017 American Music Awards, and Lil Nas X, who wore a fringed Atwood suit in the 2019 viral hit music video “Old Town Road” that’s been viewed more than 1.4 billion times worldwide on YouTube. Elevating his stature further, Atwood and his studio in 2021 appeared in a Vogue magazine spread. Cowboy Couture features a selection of other suits Atwood designed, all with his distinctive chain-stitch embroidery style.
“I hope that people walking into the exhibit will appreciate the historical context of it, but also the lasting power of this style of suit, and see up close all the work that goes into it,” Atwood said. “Fashion at its core is art. Actual tailored suits and clothing are as much art as is a painting — especially since everything I make literally starts with a drawing. I really want people to see that whole process.”
Cowboy Couture: The Fashion of Jerry Lee Atwood is sponsored by Avis Foundation Inc., Capital Group and the Braitman Family. Additional support comes from the Frenzel Family Foundation, Virginia Merkel, the Ann W. King Fund (a fund of the Indianapolis Foundation), and Richard Hailey and Mary Beth Ramey.
