Heritage Boots
Cowboy boots were born as the simple and utilitarian footwear of the Wild West. By the 1930s, Hollywood promoted them to fancy dress among its Western stars. Nashville made them even fancier. So naturally, it took an Irishman schooled in the United Kingdom’s bespoke fashion industry to reclaim the Golden Age of cowboy boots.
Jerry Ryan launched Austin’s Heritage Boots with the dream of making high-quality vintage boots. Inspired by many forgotten designs, he engaged a fifth-generation, family-owned boot factory in Mexico to make them the old way: entirely by hand, using curated, small-batch leathers.
“Ours are all single-needle stitched, the tops are one piece, while most are two. And the real mark of a boot is true wooden pegs [in place of the hobnails that typically attach the sole]. It’s how all boots were made until the ’60s and all good custom boots are today. The ’60s is my cutoff because that’s when mass production took over,” says Ryan. “You don’t see these kinds of elaborate stitched designs or inlays on mass-produced boots because it requires too much handiwork.”
Ryan recently retired, but two longtime employees have succeeded him, adding new designs. The Austin store has become a hub for collectors, actors and musicians. They’ve done a design collaboration with Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson. Fans come from across the globe. “We have customers who own every model we make in a particular toe shape,” says co-owner Kimber Breaux.
Luxury materials include ostrich, lizard, caiman, stingray and the currently trendy, sustainable bison. Heritage also uses roughout, the reverse side of leather that looks like suede but wears like iron. Most uppers feature elaborate stitching, often in contrasting colors, but are also available with inlays—carefully cut pieces of different color leathers set into the boot. At the top end are hand-tooled models, carved to give an inlaid look with a three-dimensional finish. The prices ($560 to $2,200) are comparable to higher-end, mass-produced brands, but more like eye-popping, wearable art that make visitors rethink everything they thought they knew about cowboy boots. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told new customers, ‘Get ready to get some compliments,’ ” says Breaux.
