Gladys Tamez

When Beyoncé stepped onto W Magazine’s first digital cover for the Cowboy Carter era, her dramatic Alexander McQueen coat came with an equally commanding accessory: a stark white cowboy hat created by Gladys Tamez. The image helped define the album’s Western aesthetic, but for Tamez, the hat was connected to a world she had known long before fashion came calling.

Born in Texas and raised between Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and McAllen, Texas, Tamez grew up surrounded by the visual language of the border. Cowboy hats were not costumes or trends. They were part of everyday life, worn by rancheros and deeply connected to the culture around her. “I’m Mexican, but I was born in Texas,” Tamez has said of her Tex-Mex identity.

Her path into millinery was anything but conventional. She studied art in Monterrey and later design in Florence before learning the craft of hatmaking from Los Angeles milliner Louise Green. Eventually, those different worlds came together in Gladys Tamez Millinery, where the traditions she grew up with meet the precision of European design and the energy of Los Angeles.

© Stefanie Keenan

She still makes her hats by hand in her L.A. atelier using traditional blocks, including some dating back to the 1920s, with individual pieces requiring as many as eight hours of work. That craftsmanship has attracted an extraordinary roster of women. Cher personally called the studio to order The Cher, a white hat Tamez had named in her honor. Lady Gaga’s pink hat for the Joanne era became such a defining part of the singer’s image that Tamez went on to create more than 200 hats for her tour and appearances.

Then came Beyoncé and Cowboy Carter, placing Tamez’s work at the center of another major moment in pop culture. The album went on to win Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys, while its imagery helped bring Western fashion to a new global audience.

Tamez has continued building on that momentum. In 2025, she created four handcrafted straw styles for L’AGENCE’s first summer hat capsule. In April 2026, she collaborated with Mexican creative Valentina Romero on two sculptural designs that celebrated Mexico through geometry, craftsmanship and artisanal detail. Tamez told ¡HOLA! that while every collaboration is different, she approaches each one by trying to capture the essence of the person she is creating alongside.

For Tamez, however, the power of a hat has never depended on the fame of the person wearing it. “I want to give confidence to people,” she has said. “The hat doesn’t wear you; you wear the hat.”

It is an idea that has carried her from the Texas-Mexico border to some of fashion and music’s biggest stages: heritage can be preserved without standing still, and something made by hand can still make a very modern statement.