• The cowboy outfit has become iconic in American culture.Sunset Cowboy image by Rob Duffy from Fotolia.com
  
  A cowboy's job was to drive cattle through different regions across the country. Cowboys were from varied backgrounds: former Confederate soldiers, immigrants, Native Americans, African Americans and Mexican vaqueros. Cowboys were far overworked and underpaid, and many only made it through one cattle drive before moving on to other lines of work. However, though individual men may not have remained cowboys for long, their common outfit has endured as an iconic representation of the American West.
  
  

Chaps

• Chaps were leather leggings with no seat that were worn over a cowboy's pants. They were designed to protect the cowboy's legs from injury while riding through thorny brush. There were three main popular styles of chaps: shotgun, batwing and woolies. Shotgun chaps were so named because the legs were straight and narrow, and they were the earliest version used by cowboys in Texas. Their tight design was an advantage in cold weather for trapping body heat, and eventually they become most common in the Northwest. Batwing chaps were made of smooth leather and cut with a flare at the bottom to allow for ease of mounting a horse and greater freedom of movement. They were also cooler for hot weather regions. Woolies were an even warmer variation of shotgun chaps made with a fleece-on hide and lined on the inside with canvas.
  
  

Boots

• Cowboy boots served various functions in helping ease the struggle of cattle herding. After 1865, it was a common consensus that the style of boots worn during the Civil War was unsuitable for the long hours of riding that cowboys had to endure. Thus, cowboy boots were designed to protect the legs and ankles of cowboys and help them keep their feet in the stirrups. The pointed toes of cowboy boots fit far easier in narrow stirrups than other boot styles, and the thicker heels of cowboy boots helped their feet stay in position in the stirrups more easily. The longer shaft of the boot helped protect a cowboy's ankles and legs from bruising and rough vegetation. The boots were also wide enough at the top to allow a cowboy to wiggle his foot free in case he needed to get out of the boot in a hurry, such as if his foot were to become caught in the stirrup.
  
  

Hats

• Cowboys had been wearing various types of hats long before the invention of the official cowboy hat as we know it today. Cow drivers were known to travel across the plains in anything from top hats and derbies to Civil War headgear and sailor hats. Yet John B. Stetson is credited with creating the first cowboy hat in 1865. The hat's wide brim served to protect cowboys from the rain and sun far more efficiently than a top hat ever could have. When Stetson first began producing his hat design in large quantities, the first cowboy hats were sold for $5.