![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Now Miller is teaching two apprentices in his shop, Virgile Mourtant and Julia Parmentor. Decades ago, Dunn took this wanna-be bootmaker from Vermont under his wing. Not only that, Miller trained under Charlie Dunn, the bootmaker immortalized in a Jerry Jeff Walker song he took over when Dunn retired in 1986. Lee Miller is working on a pair for Lyle Lovett when I arrive. So is the trip to Austin, home of Sixth Street, Austin City Limits and another music icon, Texas Traditions. The reason is that Kimmel is known for making tough, durable yet beautiful, well-fitting boots. “ if someone drives out here over these rough roads, they’re coming out here for a reason.” “People told me I’d get better traffic if I had my shop in town,” Eddie says. near Comanche say they may have the only boot shop in the sticks. Eddie and Kathy Kimmel of Kimmel Boot Co. Billy Graham’s bodyguard, with cross inlays and a hidden derringer holster.įrom Big D, the trail leads to the country. “It’s a passion,” Ammons says, in reference to bootmaking, not playing jokes with a fart machine (I think…).īoots are manufactured at the El Paso plant, but custom orders are taken at the Saks shop. But Rodney Ammons (Affinity Luxury Shops/Ammons Boots) has always done things differently (just ask colleagues about his notorious fart machine). Next, I head to the last place you’d expect to find a bootmaker-Saks Fifth Avenue in Dallas’ Galleria mall. “I like to make boots that leave other bootmakers cringing, saying, ‘I’m sure glad it was him doing that instead of me!’” “He said he over-trained me,” quips Chappell, who now offers bootmaking seminars.Ĭhappell pushes the limit in his boots. Jo.Ĭhappell learned the trade from his father. The Carl Chappell Boot Shop sits along the Chisholm Trail in St. I can’t visit them all, except the ones I find to be impressive. It’s time to cross the Red River, home of scores of custom bootmakers. “We still use the 1915 catalog and follow Gus Blucher’s rules.” “Nothing really has changed,” Smith says. Blucher’s clients included Westerners from Emmett Dalton to Tom Mix. In 2001, James “Smitty” Smith and partner Patrick Hale took over the company Gus Blucher founded back in 1915. Sorrell and Brown are relative newcomers to the trade, but Blucher Boot Co. So he learned how to make them, then managed to “muster up enough equipment to say I had a shop.” “I got really tired of shelf boots that would wear out 60 days after you bought them,” he says. At Hole in the Wall Boots and Saddles, he’s putting his own brand on Pawnee Bill’s town.Ĭowboying for a living made Brown appreciate good boots. Over in Pawnee, Jerry Brown was raised cowboy. I just hadn’t known before that I was a bootmaker.” “In fact, it wasn’t like finding what I wanted to be, it was more like discovering what I was. “By the time I left, I knew I wanted to be a bootmaker,” she says. Not bad for a former seamstress who “wasn’t raised cowboy” and had “never worn boots” until she answered a newspaper ad and started stitching tops for legendary bootmaker Jay Griffith. ![]() She won the Best Artist Award for wearable art at last year’s Southwestern Design Conference. Need proof that boots are art? Look no farther than Lisa Sorrell’s Sorrell Custom Boots in historic Guthrie. These boots are made for driving, so I’m taking the Bootmaker Trail. Stetson made his hats back East, but custom boots are Western, have been since cowtown bootmakers put their souls into their soles. A $50 bottle of Scotch is one thing, but a $4,000 pair of boots is not out of the realm of possibilities. Tourists go on whiskey tours in Scotland, bootmaker Lee Miller tells me, so why not take a custom bootmaker tour in America?Ĭould get a little pricey, I think. ![]()
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