Cool under the collar: Arizona's bola ties; Sensible, if not sexy, desert fashion - Best of the West - Brief Article

Sunset, April, 2002 by Lawrence W. Cheek

Before Arizona got all grown up and fancy, few guys here troubled themselves with neckties. This was eminently sensible. The last thing anyone needs on a 115[degrees] Phoenix afternoon is a gasket around the neck.

What came to pass for dress-up neckwear--and still does if you score a seriously cool one--was the bola tie (also called bolo tie), a dangle devised by a Wickenburg silversmith in the 1940s. Victor Cedarstaff was riding his horse one day when his hat blew off. Wary of losing the silver-trimmed hatband, he slipped it around his neck. His companion joked, "That's a nice-looking tie you're wearing, Vic." An idea incubated, and Cedarstaff soon fashioned the first bola tie (the name is derived from boleadora, an Argentine lariat).

Cedarstaff lived to see the Arizona legislature endorse his invention as the official state neckwear in 1971. He died in 1982, around the time that younger Arizonans were beginning to disdain the look. Until recently you rarely spotted anyone under the Social Security bar sporting one. "The overriding image of bola ties is that they're corny and dorky, worn by humorless white men who seldom commit taste or fashion," writes Tucson author Tom Miller in his latest collection of Southwestern essays, Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink.

But Peter Booth disagrees. At age 38, Booth has worn a bola to work every day for the last 10 years. He even got married in a bola. He thinks they're becoming increasingly fashionable as artisans create more intricate and better-designed bolas, some of museum quality.

Of course, he may be biased. Booth is director of education of the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in--guess where--Wickenburg, which last year acquired the 240-tie collection of Bill Close, a retired Phoenix TV news anchor whose on-air fashion signature was the bola. Here is the mother lode of bola bounty. The clasps include a caricature of Jimmy Carter, a miniature cowboy hat, Hopi kachina dolls, a token from a Nevada brothel, and slag from a copper mine.

Native American artisans make many of the quality bolas, with prices from $60. One priced at $14,000--Navajo-Hopi artist Jesse Lee Monongye's stunning evocation of Monument Valley--is made with practically microscopic inlays of coral, turquoise, lapis lazuli, opal, sugilite, and malachite. It is not dorky.

Desert Caballeros Western Museum: 21 N. Frontier St., Wickenburg; (928) 684-2272. Garland's Indian Jewelry: 3953 N. State 89A in Oak Creek Canyon, 4 miles north of Sedona; (928) 282-6632.