Orville Peck doesn’t really talk about his background. The country musician remains an anonymous figure, thanks to the fringed mask he always wears, choosing from more than 20 versions in his collection. There is a black mask with a swinging cream fringe that reaches his shoulders, and one that’s braided like a sinister chest-grazing beard in red thread. In some instances, the fringe is cropped so you can see his mouth and toothy smile. “I just woke up one day and it was on my face, and it has always been there,” he says. The masks, and Peck’s style and music as a whole, have an air of come-hither mystery, which has made him an underground country sensation.
Peck first discovered country music at the age of 14, referencing vaguely that he grew up in the Southern Hemisphere in a rural area. (Peck refers to his musical career as a “project.”) His voice is sturdy with an almost sinister tinge of vibrato, accompanied by a plucky guitar. Everything about his look has a hint of that edge. The brim of his cowboy hat is rigidly upturned, flipped up like devil’s horns. He wears his belts low. His denim pants are patchworked and have fringe scaling down the sides; his cowboy chaps come supersize.
While his fashion is certainly standout, it is not just for show. There are layers of meaning to Peck’s persona, which taps into gay culture and cowboy masculinity. “I draw a lot of inspiration from old rodeo performers and was always enamored with cowboys as a kid, the old Nudie Suits and bedazzled rhinestone and fringe,” says Peck. “You’d have all of these tough cowboy performers singing about all of this stuff and they’d be wearing rhinestoned pink suits and stuff. I found the contrast of that kind of cool. I found it kind of innately edgy.” In his newest video, “Hope to Die,” the opening shot references the famous cowboys from Vivienne Westwood’s ’70s Seditionaries T-shirt of two cowboys naked from the waist down. “There are a few hidden things in there for people,” says Peck of the fashion in the video. “There is a lot of reference to classic cowboy motifs, and in this video we reference Spaghetti Western and classic images of the cowboy and the sunset, but we add my own twist and the Orville take.”
Peck comes at a time when country music is having a renaissance, pushing outside the sphere of straight, white Garth Brooks–style men on guitar. There is the rise of Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road”; Yola, a black British musician who sings country; and even the likes of Diplo and Post Malone, who have been wearing Western-style clothing. “It seems that there is a resurgence of cowboy culture; I think that is helping country open us [up, by] showing its true diversity. Maybe it has always been there, but maybe it doesn’t have the chance to be shown,” says Peck. “Different perspectives and diversity and different sounds within that genre are coming to the foreground and being embraced, and that is exciting.”
So will Peck ever reveal his face? He has no plans to—and might not ever need to. His music and style already speak for themselves.
