On Wednesday, Bella Hadid posted a photo slideshow on Instagram that began with her hugging a horse named Tito. She wore a distinctive Western-style cowboy hat, chaps, and her hair in braids—an outfit, the next video in the carousel showed, that was selected for her first cutting horse event held at Taylor Sheridan’s Bosque Ranch in the Fort Worth suburb of Weatherford. “Never stop trying new things,” she wrote. “I feel lucky enough to have the opportunity to keep learning in life. Thank you Tito, I will never stop loving on you like this!”
Hadid’s reason for being in the Lone Star State is likely a romantic one, as the model is rumored to be dating rodeo star Adan Banuelos. (In October 2023, paparazzi captured them kissing in the historic Fort Worth Stockyards, where, twice daily, a longhorn cattle drive takes place in the streets.) All the same, her love for a horse named Tito and the rodeo reflects a growing affection for the famous cowboy city nicknamed “Cowtown.”
Hadid isn’t the only person discovering the magic of Fort Worth: The city’s tourism board found that a record 10.8 million people visited the area in 2022. And last month, Bowie House—a new five-star property from Auberge Resorts—opened in the city’s Cultural District to spectacular fanfare: on its first night in business, there was already a large Lucchese-clad crowd clamoring to get in.
To call Bowie (pronounced “Boo-wee”) House’s interiors “western” feels diminutive, especially as it’s owned by Jo Ellard, a National Cutting House Association Hall of Fame Rider. Sure, there are cow-print chairs and fringed lamps reminiscent of a leather cowboy jacket. And yes, there are equestrian photographs everywhere. But where so many hotels channel that aesthetic in a way that feels like they’re manufacturing a Disneyland-esque stage set for tourists eager to cosplay cowboy, Bowie feels like the living room of a real-life lasso thrower.
Because, well, it is: many of the pieces in Bowie House came from Ellard herself. An old dresser by the elevator for example, once sat in a room at her ranch. Meanwhile, the art comes from her thoughtful personal 400-piece collection, which she built over 15 years with purchases at Art Basel in both Miami and Switzerland. (It also includes contemporary works by street artist Hijack, David Bates, and Ashley Collins, whom Ellard credits with taking her to “the next level of art appreciation.”)
The focal point of the lobby is a restored 200-year-old bar that Ellard found at an auction house in Waco, Texas. “It s a true saloon kind of bar,” says Kemper Hyers, Auberge’s chief creative officer. “The craftsmanship is absolutely unbelievable.”
Ellard says the goal of Bowie House was to capture the soul of Fort Worth. “We adhere to the Western lifestyle we love: We may spend our week in the city doing our business, building our companies, raising our families, but instead of going playing golf at the country club on the weekend, we re going to the ranch getting on tractors and horses,” she says of her city. She also notes its impressive cultural panache: both the internationally-renowned Kimbell Art Museum and Museum of Modern Art are just half a mile away from Bowie House. “Fort Worth is a very sophisticated city—it just happens to have this Western identity and influence,” she says. Adds Hyers: “The hotel isn’t cartoony, it’s not obvious.”
There are 106 luxuriously appointed guest rooms at Bowie House, attracting tourists in town for rodeo season as well as stay-cationers from the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Yet, come nighttime, the hotel is packed with way more than those with room keys in their pocket. The restaurant, Brick Horses, is booked solid for months, while there’s rarely a free seat at the Lobby Bar and the adjacent game room—even at their closing time of 2 a.m. (When a bartender announced last call, this writer witnessed a diamond-dripping patron simply asking if she could reach over and just grab the open bottle of red behind the counter.) At that moment, I knew my first Fort Worth rodeo certainly wasn’t going to be my last.
