‘We are like Rodeo Drive in the mountains’
want us to be real.”
Ever since Earle’s “Aspen costume” TikTok went viral, Kunkle’s son has been keeping track of the online conversation about Kemo Sabe. When he read her “all of the terrible things being said on TikTok,” the proprietor said she started crying.
“This is a real store,” Kunkle said. “Real people work here. We are hardworking locals, and they think we’re some big huge corporations that are backed by celebrities. But we don’t pay for celebrities. We don’t do any of that stuff. We never have.”
Valdmanis, the marketing director, seconded that view.
“People have this perspective of Aspen — and it’s true to a certain extent — that we are like Rodeo Drive in the mountains,” she said. “But we were a mining town. We were cowboy first.”
The name of the store is another point of contention. “Kemo sabe” is the moniker given to the protagonist of “The Lone Ranger,” a long-running radio and television series that got its start in 1933, by his Native American sidekick, Tonto.
There are no conclusive accounts about the phrase’s origins and whether or not it is a term that descends from an actual Native American language. Whatever the case, it is certainly not what a white couple might be advised to name a store in the 21st century.
“People get mad at us about that, too,” Kunkle said.
The store’s name, chosen by Tom Yoder more than three decades ago, does not seem to have affected its business, especially when it comes to the rich and famous. Loyal customers include Beyoncé, Shania Twain, the Kardashian-Jenner family, Rihanna and Kevin Costner, who has a 160-acre vacation home in Aspen.
The rise of cowboy style has also made the hats into more of a fashion staple, especially among a certain cadre of well-paid, city-dwelling young people with social media accounts who flock to Aspen to ski and hit the bars.
A recent TikTok uploaded by the Austin, Texas-based content creator Hannah Chody showed upward of a dozen women — herself included — at the Aspen airport, each wearing a personalized cowboy hat from Kemo Sabe.
“Skipping Kemo Sabe would be criminal,” Chody, who purchased her own hat at the Park City location, captioned the post.
For Chody, the hat is a fun souvenir. “People get them just to have the experience of going and making them and crossing it off their bucket list,” she said, “especially if they’re visiting from New York, Chicago or LA.”
And while the big-hat influencers may annoy certain TikTok commenters who find their style inauthentic, Kunkle says she embraces all kinds of customers.
“They want to feel the romance, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” she said. “And, really, it’s terrible when people are like ‘the Aspen costume.’ That is not what it is. It is people wanting a taste and a feel of the West.”