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Last summer, at a party in Nashville for new kid on the block Eric Heatherly, I watched an important rite of passage take place. Heatherly was presented with a beautiful ornate yellow jacket; his very first jacket from the designer Manuel. It was a proud moment for the young star because if you're wearing Manuel - or Nudie, his predecessor - then everybody knows that you're somebody.

And so I began looking into the story of two immigrants who came to the United States and made their careers dressing America's biggest cultural icons. Between them the late Nudie Cohn and his former head tailor Manuel Cuevas cut the cloth for Elvis Presley, Clint Eastwood, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, Elton John, Marlon Brando, Ronald Reagan and anyone who's anyone in country music - Hank Williams, Dwight Yoakam, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris to name a few.

To find out more I spoke to Nudie's granddaughter, Jamie Mendoza, who ran Nudie's Custom Java, a Hollywood coffee house bursting with Nudie memorabilia. I also visited Manuel's shop in Nashville, not far from Music Row, and spoke to one of his regular customers, country star Travis Tritt (left).

Born in Kiev in 1902 (happy 100th!) Nuta Cohn's family emigrated to New York when he was eleven, and he immediately became Nudie due to a mistake on his immigration papers. He began working in sweat shops and making g-strings for show girls, before moving to California when he was nineteen to pursue a career as a boxer. He enjoyed watching westerns, but "kept thinking they looked a bit lost up there on the big screen, they needed a little flash", says Jamie. "He decided, why not rhinestones? And why not have fringes with lots of rhinestones?" He had been given the odd non-speaking part in films and started to make costumes on the side to earn a bit of extra cash.

The first person he approached was Tex Williams. Jamie describes how Nudie boldly went round to his house, "He said, "I want to make you and your band some clothes but first I need $150 for a sewing machine." And Tex says "Well, you know, times aren't so good, but I got a horse in the back we can put up for auction!" He put the horse up for auction, got the $150 bucks and my grandfather bought the sewing machine and started making clothes from there." He and his wife then opened up Nudie's Rodeo Tailors in North Hollywood in 1947 and business took off. They designed clothes for all the movie actors, and as soon as Hank Williams started strutting round Nashville in his brand new Nudie gear all the country stars followed suit and have done so ever since.

The clothes were bright and flashy, with intricate embroidery and appliqué work and the more fringes and rhinestones the better. Nudie often drew on the artist's life for inspiration, for example outlining the letters L and F on Lefty Frizzell's suit with rhinestones, stitching wagon wheels onto Porter Wagoner's suits, which would became Wagoner's trademark, giving Hank Williams (left) a cream suit with musical notes filling the lapels, a stave running the length of the sleeves and a guitar on the back, or, perhaps the most famous of all, Gram Parsons' suit (see below) decorated with marijuana leaves, pills and crosses. But he didn't stop at suits; Nudie also customised boots, saddles and cars, like Webb Pierce's 1962 Pontiac Bonneville which is now parked on the first floor of the Country Music Hall Of Fame in Nashville. An enormous and ostentatious vehicle, it had horseshoe shaped pedals, pistols for door handles, huge steers horns on the bonnet and a thousand silver dollar pieces embedded in the interior.
But sometimes a piece had to be designed simply for maximum impact, as with one of the most famous pieces to come out of Nudie's Rodeo Tailors: the $10000 gold lame suit for Elvis (right), made at the start of his career in 1956. Everything, down to his shoes, was sprayed gold.

Through fellow Hollywood embroiderer, Viola Grae, Nudie met a young Mexican called Manuel Cuevas who was in her employ. Making clothes was his first love, having become familiar with scissors and a sewing machine at the age of seven. When he was 21 he moved to America and his first wage was a dollar an hour. His boss recognised his talent and said he should move on to somewhere with better opportunities, then his next boss said exactly the same thing. Before he knew it he was making suits for Jerry Lee Lewis, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Junior. "But I still wasn't happy" he says, "because you know my thing was colours, my thing was something different than that. I really got tired of making monkey suits; tuxedos, grey, you know. You move from grey to dark grey to executive grey to black and you never get out of there."

Manuel joined Nudie as his head tailor in 1962 and they had a great working relationship, indeed Manuel became part of the family when he married the boss' daughter, Barbara. They had an instinctive understanding of their customers' needs - which once even went so far as Nudie bailing Gram Parsons (pictured right, with Nudie) out of jail - won them eternal admiration and friendship from their clients. When former movie star Ronald Reagan became president he sent a telegram thanking Nudie for all the years of designing his clothes. Marty Stuart calls Manuel his brother; Manuel's act of generosity the first time they met led to a lifelong friendship. (Hear Manuel tell the story, right.)

But Manuel and Barbara's divorce in 1976 made things difficult and so Manuel left Nudie's employ and set up Manuel's Exclusive Clothiers. When Nudie died in 1984, at the grand age of 81, eight hundred people came to the funeral, all dressed in Nudie suits.

Manuel later moved his business from California to Nashville, which was nearer his clientele. The shop is very low-key on the outside but when you enter it is simply a treasure chest of sparkling rhinestones and intensely vivid colours. When I caught up with him he was in the middle of making a suit for Mavericks frontman Raul Malo. It was the day before the CMA Awards and Manuel told me it was a busy time because "everyone's expecting clothes. The ones who have clothes are bringing them in to be pressed….or enlarged at the waist!" Manuel doesn't go to anybody, they all have to come to him for their fittings, and I must have picked the right day because first Travis Tritt dropped by, then Kenny Chesney. Sadly no rhinestones, but clear evidence of the versatility of Manuel's design: a sharp grey suit for Kenny and a wonderful full-length jacket made out of a Mexican blanket for Travis. (Hear Travis Tritt explain how Manuel's clothes defined his image and boosted his career, right.)

The shop holds racks of jackets in every shade you could think of. They range from the understated, with intricate embroidery of simply horses or flowers, to the more flamboyant, like the rack of jackets, each one depicting an American state. The one for Tennessee has the back almost completely embroidered with the Opry stage. Manuel proudly showed me the pieces he designed in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks: a full length dress which puts the "spangle" in star-spangled banner and a striking jacket (left) complete with bald eagles, stars of the union and a huge star and stripes emerging from the rubble of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

But as you expect this level of craftsmanship doesn't come cheap, you need several thousand dollars to go shopping here. But what you can do is go to the Country Music Hall Of Fame in Nashville where they display many famous pieces, many of them donated by Marty Stuart who is probably the biggest collector of Nudie pieces. As well as clothes and boots there is also Nudie's original sewing machine, and a three-page letter from Patsy Cline sent to Nudie a few days before she died in the plane crash, with her measurements and a drawing of the skirt and top she wanted. The Autry Museum Of Western Heritage in LA also houses some pieces including some designed for Porter Wagoner and Elton John. They also hosted an exhibition to coincide with the publication of the book How The West Was Worn (now that's a pun to celebrate), which tells the full story of the tailors who made the stars shine.

Sue Keogh - January 2002