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The Evolution of the Cowboy Boot, Beyond the Western Ranch

The cowboy boot has moved from workwear to pop culture to high fashion, all without ever fully leaving its ranching roots behind.

If you take a look at street style pictures from any fashion week or peruse photos of festival-goers, chances are you’ll spot more than a handful of cowboy boots in the crowd. Whether it’s a pair of silver boots from Annie’s Ibiza and Terry De Havilland spotted outside a Ganni show in Copenhagen or Kendrick Lamar flaunting a custom pair by Rocketbuster while performing at Coachella, cowboy boots seem to have infiltrated every plane and corner of the world, but how did the quintessential Americana style become a staple without borders?

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To begin tracing the expansion of cowboy boots, we need to make our way back to the American West. Texas and Kansas are widely credited as the birthplaces of this style of functional footwear, with various shops across the states pioneering it in the 19th century. Though the American West still has a strong claim to the cowboy boot and its aesthetic, the first seeds were planted long before riders and ranchers of the region began saddling up.

“I’m always resistant to make singular origin claims around practical, purpose-built garments or footwear that emerged in different parts of the world at different moments in history,” Sonya Abrego, a New York City-based fashion historian and author of Westernwear: Postwar American Fashion and Culture, tells Observer. “But what we recognize today as a cowboy boot has roots in Spanish equestrian culture—a riding boot with a narrow toe to help the foot slide in the stirrup and a heel to help secure it in place came to this continent with horses and cattle that the Spanish colonizers brought with them from the 1400s.”

Brought over first from Spain and later via Mexico, the vaquero influence on cowboy boots is undeniable, but similar boot styles were also present in other European countries. Lithographs from the 17th century show French military personnel and horsemen donning cavalier boots, a sister to the cowboy boot that was also popular in England, sometimes even equipped with spurs.

Despite external influences, the cowboy boot as we know it today emerged from agrarian roots in the post-Civil War United States. “As cattle ranching expanded after the American Civil War, bootmakers developed specialized designs that better suited cowboys’ daily work on horseback,” says Vicky Latham, who co-founded and co-leads London-based specialized fashion brand Jessie Western alongside her sister Jessie Blake. Together, the sisters have been selling and manufacturing cowboy boots with North American makers for over a quarter of a century, gaining clients such as Bella Hadid, Kate Moss, Chloe Sevigny, Kate Hudson and Brad Pitt. 

Some of the defining features of today’s cowboy boot shoe style include “taller boot shafts, sturdy leather, pointed toes and angled heels, [which] became standard because they improved comfort and safety while riding,” says Latham. One of the first known examples of the modern cowboy boot dates back to 1875 and is attributed to........

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