Modern Cowboy Boots

Merriam Webster's 1986 Dictionary defines a cowboy, cowpoke, or cowpuncher, as: "one who tends cattle or horses, especially a mounted cattle ranch worker." The word cowboy is actually a transliteration of the original Spanish word the "vaquero” where “vaca” means cow. The English term prior to the adoption of the Spanish Vaquero and subsequently cowboy was "Drover." It was in the open spaces of New Mexico, in America where the original American cowboy, the Spanish vaquero evolved along with the original western saddle, cowboy methods, (e.g. roping), and vocabulary, beginning along the Rio Grande river basin. But cowboys existed before that, andas early as the 1760s when Indians and Mexicans were recruited by the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church to cattle ranch in California. The agricultural practice only began in Texas in the 1820s but the lifestyle didn’t permeate the region until the railroad, albeit incomplete, reached Abilene, Kansas.

Since the military specifications didn’t fit with these cowboys’ needs much change was made to the boot and by 1870 John Cubine, in Coffeyville, Kansas, had combined the Wellington and military-style boots into the “Coffeyville”-style boot – the start of new things.

There is one myth at least that should be put to bed. Despite studies being done of photographs of early cowboys, there has never been a single pair of boots or shoes with a pointed toe. While it can’t be proven that cowboys didn’t wear this, no pair exists. Every single pair of cowboy boots examined in every study from the 1860s through the 1930s had either a medium-to-wide round or square toe. It was not until the 1940s that the cowboy boot toe dramatically changed shape. The pointy, sharp, cockroach-killer did not appear until the late 1950s, then remained popular as "the" toe for men, women, and children throughout the sixties and a large part of the seventies.

Cowboy boots rose to a fashion high as a by-product of the entertainment industry's success with the cowboy hero. The 1920s and 1930s West was a world of entertainment and Hollywood idols became the springboard for the fashion-vs-function "anything goes" cowboy boot styles of this period.
More than any other entertainment star, Tom Mix had the greatest influence on western wear and boots, especially as an emerging style for the masses. When Mix died in a car accident on October 12, 1940, he was wearing black patent-leather boots with a floral design stitched in red, white, and blue silk thread.

During the next twenty-five years, cowboy boot designs became increasingly intricate and colourful. Most boot pairs were symmetrical mirror images: the outside matched the inside of the partner boot in reverse. Some of the new abstract designs that had been devised from floral images, leaves, tulips, roses, scrolls, and flame patterns were now being incorporated in ever-increasing colours and variations. Spider webs, hair-on longhorn heads, cactus pears, eagles in flight, horses, horse shoes, bucking broncs, oil derricks, decks of cards, crescent moons surrounded by stars, and endless varieties of butterflies, eagles, flowers, and vines all but replaced the simpler inlaid boots of the 1920s and early thirties.

In the post-WWII period Wild West shows were over, so the old-time ranch rodeos became, instead, organised town and city sporting events. Boots became much more than pragmatic protection against rattlesnakes, mesquite thorns, cactus, bad weather, saddle chafing. It was ShowTime and time for the boot to jazz up for the occasion.

Enter the Big Five — Justin, Tony Lama, Nocona, Hyer, and Acme — all began to mass produce millions of pairs to satisfy this first wave of national cowboy-boot mania.

From 1940 to 1965 the golden age of boot making reigned, creativity was at its peak as boot makers pushed all the limits of their imagination and skill. So profound were its effects that in the 1960s, John Wayne was competing with the Beatles for the admiration of American youth.

Nothing much changed in the 1970s until 1980 and the movie “Urban Cowboy” starring John Travolta kick-started a revival, boosted by Sandra Kauffman's Cowboy Catalogue Book being released with full instructions in the buying and wearing of cowboy boots, and all things western to city dwellers and “wanna-be” urban cowboys – the same way London and New York stockbrockers now line up at their local pubs wearing the Australian cowboy attire of drizabones and leather hats.

By 1985 the urbane cowboy trend had worn off. It wasn’t until the two movies in that same year —Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise wearing a pair of vintage inlaid boots, and Silverado, which was the stepping-off point for fashion boots in the entertainment industry – that interest in classic cowboy boot styles of the 1890s to the 1950s re-emerged. Cowboy boots sold everywhere until in 1992 when the Cowboy Boot Book – the new bible was published.

It provided an economic revival and by the turn of the millennium the average base price of a pair of custom-made cowboy boots is $US450 and up.

And so now, nearly 150-years old cowboy boots have a new appeal.
Women have entered the business and custom of cowboy-boot making with apprenticeships quadrupling since 1992. The "first lady" of cowboy boot making was, Enid Justin (sister of the Justin brothers; started Nocona Boot Company in 1925), she knew all there was to know about bootmaking but never made one herself.

Then the first noticeable new trend after 1993 was an increased interest in hand-carved leather boot tops. In the past, floral designs and the occasional cowboy on a bronc were the limit. But now, saddle makers and leather-crafts people are being called upon to tool tops of every description—portraits of loved ones and pets, a favourite boat or classic automobile, pictorial storytelling from top to bottom and toe to heel. Increasingly, these designs, as well as the classic floral patterns, are being hand-painted and -stained in a rainbow of colours for visual impact and emphasis on minute details.

Suddenly, hand-beaded boots began to pop up; then varying techniques and styles of machine embroidery came on the scene; rhinestone boots are back; studded boots; long mule ears with sterling silver conchos; ornate stitching and inlays; then the ancient art of pitiado was revived. We are seeing gold, diamonds, silver, prehistoric mammoth tusk, ancient coins, and precious stones set into boot leather to create wearable cowboy-boot jewellery.

Cowboy boots, you see, were made for more than walking.