The day I walk into Rockmount Ranch Wear to see Steve,there's a group of suited men at the back of the shop deliberating in Spanish over boots while a younger man roams the room looking for a good bull-riding shirt. It's spring and the rodeo circuit is about to start.
Rockmount sells direct to the public these days from the same building where this family-owned Western wear manufacturing business began nearly 70 years ago. With its antique glass facade,retro window dressing,tasteful Turkish rugs,wooden floorboards and pressed metal ceiling,Rockmount is the oldest store in Denver's historic Lower Downtown district.
Up in an open mezzanine office that runs along one wall,Steve Weil​ is having a creative brainwave on a new pocket design so I give his some space. I wander the shop mooning over shadow plaids and vintage threads while the suits continue to contemplate cowboy footwear and the lone wolf tells anyone listening that the crazy beast he's soon to ride has killed hundreds who've tried. He's so insistent that I can only conclude it's a load of bulldust.
Which means we're all in the right place. Although Rockmount originally designed its shirts to give cowboys,ranchers and farmers of the American West some practical new features and a distinctive look,the business is also built on the notion that you don't have to be the real thing to wear the real thing.
"If we had to live off cowboys,we'd go broke,"Weil tells me upstairs from behind his messy desk. He's the third generation of Weil men to run Rockmount,founded in 1946 by Steve's grandfather who introduced press studs,sawtooth pockets and slim fit to Western shirts.
His name was Jack A Weil,but you can call him Papa Jack.
You already know something of Papa even though you didn't think you did. His distinctive shirts have been worn by celebrities from Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan,Miley Cyrus to Reece Witherspoon,Cary Grant to Jack Black. Anne Hathaway,Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal wore Rockmount shirts in the 2005 filmBrokeback Mountain,two garments from which have since sold collectively at auction for just over US$100,000 ($140,000). Once you know what you're looking for,there's no mistaking a Rockmount.
Papa Jack was born in Indiana but fell in love with the Rocky Mountains and drove a spanking new Chrysler Roadster into Denver in 1926 to make a fresh life selling the romance of the cowboy life after he'd finished up selling garters and suspenders. The West is not a place,it is a state of mind,came from Papa Jack.