Beyoncé’s Assless Denim Chaps Send a Deeper Message Than You Might Think

On this day, March 29, Beyoncé graced the world with Cowboy Carter.

“This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album,” the 42-year-old musician previously wrote of her eighth studio album—but that doesn’t mean she’s not leaning into Western style to promote her 27-track masterpiece. On release day Queen Bey shared even more cowboy-inspired art on Instagram, including another angle of those RW&B assless chaps featured on the album’s cover.

But those weren’t the only chaps worn in her photo dump. In slide nine Beyoncé can be seen shooting finger guns off camera in a pair of denim chaps from Louis Vuitton’s 2024 menswear collection, delivered by none other than men’s creative director Pharrell Williams. While one LV model walked the runway in a double-denim version of the look with a black leather cowboy hat, Beyoncé wore her wide-leg chaps over a daring pair of denim underwear, a ripped white tank top, and her obligatory white cowboy hat.

Though Beyoncé could have easily recycled the denim chaps look from her own 2021 Ivy Park campaign or collaborated with Levi’s (which was name-checked on the album), Williams’s collection truly embodies the sartorial spirit of Cowboy Carter, which is probably why Beyoncé keeps pulling from that runway show. On February 4 she saddled up to the Grammy Awards in Louis Vuitton’s checkerboard leather suit, though she traded the trousers for a pair of shorts.

“I feel like when you see cowboys portrayed, you see only a few versions,” Williams told GQ of the collection in January. “You never really get to see what some of the original cowboys really look like. They look like us, they look like me, they look Black, they look Native American.”

A model wears Beyoncé’s denim chaps down the Paris runway on January 16.

Victor VIRGILE/Getty Images

A model wears a version of Beyoncé’s Grammys look in Paris on January 16.

Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Getty Images

Not long after Beyoncé became the first Black woman to score a No. 1 hit in the history of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs with “Texas Hold ’Em,” the singer revealed that Cowboy Carter was sparked by a negative experience with the country music industry five years ago (which many have linked to her Country Music Awards performance in 2016).

“[This album] was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t,” Beyoncé wrote earlier this month. “But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.”

She continued, “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. Act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”