Brat summer is sooo two years ago. This summer belongs to horses and the people who love them. Year of the Horse is underway. We’re seeing a stampede of equine imagery in the celebrity world, in fashion, and in tech. Horses have had a hold on us since the earliest days of civilization, but why all the horsing around now? Let’s take a look.

To understand our ancient relationship with horses and why they still capture our imagination, we need to rewind a bit. Only about 17,000 years back, when an unknown artist used mineral pigments to paint horses in the Lascaux Cave. There are about 600 animal representations still preserved there and most of them are horses. Fast forward to around 3500 BCE, and the first signs of domestication start to appear in the archaeological record. This is a design history newsletter, so we’ll keep it broad strokes. There’s no us without horses. Horses have played a crucial role in human development: scouting trade routes, carrying news, aiding agriculture, going to war. Across cultures, they’ve been revered as creatures that make progress possible—admired for their power and strength, trusted for their speed. To distill all the meaning they’ve carried since the very beginning, horses symbolize movement and possibility.

Our dependence on and companionship with horses throughout history has inspired countless pieces of art. The Ancient Greeks stamped them onto coins and created Geometric bronze horse statuettes as offerings to the gods. Among the 8,000 life-sized clay sculptures in Qin Shi Huang’s Terracotta Army, you’ll find horses honored alongside warriors. Horses found their way into myth and folklore where they loomed large for members of every class. But in day-to-day life, the cost of keeping them made horses early status symbols of wealth and social standing.

Now let’s jump forward to post-Industrial Revolution. Myth and folklore didn’t disappear altogether, but new contenders entered the cultural arena: brands. Global fashion house Hermès originally started as a harness and saddle maker for the European elite, and horses have been a central part of their identity since 1837. Burberry’s famous knight rode into shops in 1901, bringing with it outdoor clothing for aristocrats who led busy lives hunting on horseback and playing equestrian sports. Stateside, Ralph Lauren was founded in 1967 and quickly became an aspirational brand for people who seek out the “American dream.” Horses have made their mark in working class brands, too. Levi’s original logo from 1886 features two horses pulling a pair of their denim jeans in opposite directions to signal durability and dependability.

Some would say that, with the way trends cycle, culture is a circle. In some ways, it’s more like a horseshoe. There’s been a major country revival in music over the past handful of years. Lil Nas X, Orville Peck, and Kacey Musgraves have made country-fueled contributions to the current musical landscape. The release of Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter in 2024 brought a sudden demand for rhinestone-covered cowboy hats. We saw Sabrina Carpenter collaborate with one of the most beloved figures in country music history, the one-and-only Dolly Parton. It’s worth noting how what we’ll refer to as Horse Girl Aesthetic has recently gone mainstream because even a decade ago, horse girl culture was split into two camps. There were the girls who could afford to be near horses and there were the girls who wanted to be horses. And back then, the latter wasn’t exactly popular. But maybe they got closest to the true spirit of horses, unbridled and unashamed and free from things like math class and school dances. Gen Z has since reclaimed horses as a symbol of hope, expressing themselves through memes that feature horses galloping away from the stresses of modern life. They’re accessorizing with horsey goods from BAGGU, they’re heading out for the evening in Fashion Brand Company’s dueling horses crop jacket.Within the studio, we’ve tapped into the equestrian state of mind through our design work for Lonesomes Provisions.

No cultural wave is complete without tech brands getting their hands on it. Companies like TwelveLabs are adopting horses in their branding as symbols of momentum, intelligence, and harnessable power. Which makes sense given that horses and technology have a storied history. After all, the first motion picture was Eadweard Muybridge’s Horses in Motion (1878). We reached out to several horses for comment, but when we mentioned API they thought we said apple.

Horses are showing up digitally in memes and startup branding, but ultimately, horses are the opposite of the internet. They’re physical, instinctive, and impossible to optimize. Maybe that’s why we’ve always projected meaning onto them and why they hold so much appeal right now. Perhaps those horse girls who daydreamed of galloping across wide-open fields were onto something.

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Sources

:‍https://www.purseblog.com/real-talk/fashions-bizarre-obsession-with-equestrianism/‍

‍https://www.luxuo.com/business/branding-horsepower-the-enduring-role-of-horses-in-luxury-logos.html‍

‍https://thedesignlove.com/horse-in-branding/‍‍

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-you-need-know-about-chinas-terra-cotta-warriors-first-qin-emperor-30942673/

‍‍https://www.horseeducationonline.com/post/the-domestication-of-the-horse-a-historical-introduction-for-beginners?srsltid=AfmBOoo8gxfooUckSpxcakCpJDVF3bvnff4M2199niTQWvCX5jYLdnIb‍‍

https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/lascaux/en/themes-0‍‍

https://www.artic.edu/articles/1169/horses-in-ancient-art‍‍

https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/20009/883

‍‍https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/251050‍‍

https://glamobserver.com/the-history-and-evolution-of-the-burberry-logo/‍‍

https://www.tailorbrands.com/blog/levis-logo‍https://www.levistrauss.com/levis-history/