Adopting a “look” might sound somewhat limiting.  In some situations, it is.  Thankfully, Western styles are sufficiently diverse enough, both among brands and within brands, that there’s a host of routes you and your wardrobe can take.  Wearing Western wear is an excellent opportunity to express yourself within a particular style.

Take the Western shirt, for example.  The Western shirt is widely recognized and is an iconic element of Western style, culture, and experience.  With its emphasis on (often elaborate) patterns, touches of stitching, and nearly ubiquitous pearl snap buttons, the garment as a genre is fairly well established and easily understood.  However, there are many ways different shirt-makers will go in their interpretation of this classic style.

For evidence of this, look no further than the wildly different looks employed by Panhandle Slim and Zagiri.  While the former operates within relatively strict bounds, offering traditional patterns and cuts and drawing deeply from the cowboy aesthetic, the latter opts for a much more high-class, almost urban and sleek riff on the style.  Zagiri shirts have can have elaborate stitching and patterning, just like typical Western shirts, but they’re almost used as mere reference points to make a garment more inspired by traditions than following them.

Of course, none of this is to imply that we prefer Panhandle Slim shirts over Zagiri ones, or vice versa.  Instead, the goal here is to point out that, even within the relatively strict-sounding confines of Western wear, there’s plenty of room to express yourself.

Looking to shop in the flesh?  We have two wonderful boot stores to serve you no matter where you happen to live in Austin.  Our first, our Austin boots store, is located off of South Congress Ave. in the heart of the South Austin shopping district.  (If you’re driving or meandering down that way, you won’t be able to miss our iconic red Justin boot on the awning in front of our roof.  We told you we were  big Justin boots fans!)  It’s easy to spend a leisurely afternoon perusing the unique shops in the area, and when you do, be sure to stop by and stroll down our leather-fragrant aisles for a bit.

But South Congress isn’t for everyone all the time, especially if you don’t even, you know, live in Austin.  If you’re north of us, don’t fear!  Our Round Rock boots store will be sure to do the trick.  Situated right off I-35, it’s perfect for some drive-by booting.

Live really far away (or did I perhaps discourage you from leaving your house again until November)?  Peruse our delightful selection of cowboy boots right here, in the comfort of your own air-conditioned, far-flung home!  You can order them online and—heck—we’ll even ship them to you!  Happy hunting.

Yippee Ki Yay boots

Yippee Ki Yay: A Modern Tradition

As previously mentioned, Yippee Ki Yay boots are manufactured by Old Gringo.  This means they’re crafted with the ultimate attention to detail consumers have come to know and expect from Old  Gringo.  For example, there’s the hallowed, laborious process that comes with handcrafting Yippee Ki Yay  boots.  There are over 130 steps required to make a pair of the boots, and not a single one of these steps is currently automated.

That’s right.  The upper materials need to be hand-cut.  Our shafts and vamps need to be pre-fitted.  The stitching, the handtooling, and the embroidery are all directed by human hands.  The insoles, outsoles, lasts, and uppers all need to be assembled.  We’ll say it again: In the 130+ processes that go into a pair of Yippee Ki Yays or Old Gringos, every single one of them uses human hands.  Pretty impressive.

The result is a series of gorgeous boots that are nevertheless surprisingly affordable.  Take, for example, the Yippee Ki Yay Vintage Chocolate Ida Boots.  Crafted with a worn-in, rusticated chocolate color, and adorned with a delicate flower pattern, these boots are beautiful and well worth their $259.99 asking price.  Also check out the Yippee Ki Yay Black Doc Holiday Boots, which feature a burnished black finish to go along with intricately attractive stitching—all for $249.99.

Find all these excellent cowboy boots selections and more at Allens Boots, your premier online boot store!

Old Gringo got its start in the fall of 2000, when renowned boot maker Yan Ferry and Ernie Tarut, who has long-standing ties in the leather manufacturing and wholesale businesses, opened the Old Gringo boot factory.  Six months after that, they began offering their wares to the world.  In part due to the sterling reputations of Ferry and Tarut, and in part due to their excellent, unique offerings, their brand took off, and was quickly adopted by Western clothing retailers all across the country.  Within two years of starting up, Old Gringo expanded their manufacturing footprint into Leon, Mexico, where they opened a larger factory in order to keep up with rapidly growing demand.

The brand’s skyrocketing popularity is rooted firmly in their spectacular quality.  The process of making an Old Gringo boot takes over 130 time-intensive steps performed with rigorous standards by skilled craftsmen.  The results are comfortable, stylish, and highly distinctive, boots like the Old Gringo Swarovski Crystals Eagle Boots, which is beautifully studded with Swarovski crystals to form eagle silhouettes on the boot’s throat and instep.

For those looking to make a bigger splash, the Old Gringo Leopardito Violet Eagle Boots are an excellent choice.  Featuring a similar eagle design, but with the background stained violet, these are surely eye-catching boots.

Looking for something else?  No worries!  If it’s Western wear, we’ll have it.  Swing by our Austin boot store anytime and check out our excellent in-house selection.  Live far from us?  Peruse our selection of cowboy boots online!  We ship.  Happy hunting!

What better place to start than the homepage?  Right off the bat, we give you several options to pick what you’re looking for, whether that’s men’s, women’s, or children’s boots, cowboy hats, accessories, or western wear.  Well, what else would you expect, right?  After all, that’s what we sell!

Let’s click on one of our options.  Say we want men’s cowboy boots.  Very well, then.  We click on it, and we’re directed to a page with six different pairs of boots in the middle, and a sidebar with a bevy of search options.  (Not every day you see “bevy” italicized, right?  We like to go for the unexpected.)

Now here comes the fun part: We want some Lucchese boots, so let’s click on that option in the sidebar.  Bam!  The boots in the main area of the page shuffle, and we’re left with only a selection of Lucchese boots to look at.  We’re a size 11, so we’re going to go ahead and click on that and voila! We’re left with a selection of boots that fit us, right away.  How else can we narrow down the search?  Well, we’ve always been partial to brown boots, so let’s select that.  At this point, we’re left with five excellent options, but we think the Mens Lucchese Chocolate Mad Dog Goat Boots just speak to us in that special place in our heart reserved for excellent footwear.

Well, that’s our blow-by-blow of how the shopping mechanics work on our new site!  We hope you enjoy using it as much as we do drooling over our boots.

Being around such experts, we now know a little bit about that ourselves, and we’re more than glad to share the lore we’ve picked up along the way with you all.  Let’s try and demystify just how those boots fit on your feet, shall we?

About that snugness we mentioned earlier: Boots should be this way, for sure, but not to the point where they’re crunching bones.  The point is that boots, made with skin, have lives of their own, and will stretch to form to your foot with use.  Boots that seem to fit loosely when you first buy them will only get more so with time, and will soon be uncomfortably loose.

Related to this, make sure you take the thickness of the socks you plan on wearing into account.  For cowboy boots, we suggest getting some boot socks like Thorlos Socks, which provide superior protection against blisters and inflammation.

When you go buy a new pair of cowboy boots, make sure you wear the socks you’ll be wearing with them.  It might sound like an undue amount of planning, but it really isn’t.  Your feet, after all, will be more than thankful for the consideration.

Now, boots are strongly associated with born-and-raised Texans, and it’s likely considered a more significant statement of what it means to be a Texan to them than to people who move to the Lone Star State from outside of it.  I’m going to go ahead and posit that the opposite is true, that to us Texas transplants, the cowboy boots we own are more meaningful, more important and integral to us.  Not that it’s a contest or anything, but just like any group of immigrants longing to fit in, we out-of-staters like to cling to those symbols that show that we fit in.  Ponying up to a bar and ordering a Lone Star is one way.  Rooting for the Rockets is another way.  And buying cowboy boots—more so than cowboy hats, since those are for true die-hards—is yet another way.

I’ve done all three of these things with different degrees of enthusiasm (the order, in case you’re wondering, is boots, Lone Star, Rockets).  My first pair was a pair of Justin boots.  They were Ropers.  They were reasonably priced, and I figured that it wouldn’t be a big loss if I ended up not wearing them that frequently, so I bought them.  They were a hair tight at first, and I felt a little hesitant wearing them out and about (not due to tightness, but due to feeling “authentic” wearing them).  However, as time went on, I grew more comfortable with them, and they grew more comfortable with me.  Today, they’re among my favorite footwear—and they get to share closet space with some nice Lucchese boots I bought last year.  Those Luccheses are definitely the classier boots, and I get compliments about them all the time.

Still, I’ll never forget that first pair.

We understand and we’re glad to here it!  Consider this post, then, a handy little guide designed to help you pick out that perfect first pair.

The first thing you’ll need to consider, before you even walk into a Western wear store or visit any site, is a budget.  There are certainly a host of good, affordable cowboy boots out there, but their prices can quickly shoot through the roof.  If you’re looking to make a splash with your first purchase, then by all means, do so.  Just be sure to have a solid price range in the back of your mind when you start looking.  It helps your focus.

Once you get past that stage, you’ll need to think about cowboy boot fit.  This is a crucial point to consider, and it can sound a little tricky, but it’s really not.  The point here is to buy boots that are a little on the snug side.  Since boots are fashioned from animal skin, they are malleable and will stretch out a little bit once they’re worn around a little bit.  If you buy boots that feel perfect off the bat, they’ll end up feeling loose after you’ve worn them a few times.  We’re not talking toe-breakingly tight here, but go slightly smaller than you’d think for the best results.

Finally, consider the kind of skin you’re looking for.  They all have different properties, and that should be taken into account.  For example, goat skin boots are softer than others, while stingray skin boots are definitely on the tougher side.  There’s a lot of area to explore here, so consider well.

We’ll discuss more tips on how to make sure your first cowboy boot purchase is a happy one in future blog posts.  For now, happy hunting!

Socks have existed for millenia.  Just like anything that’s existed for millenia, it’s a bit difficult to precisely pin when and where they came about.  However, we do know that ancient Greeks wore socks from matted animal hair, while the Romans opted for leather or woven booties.  Due to their nature as flimsy products worn on a heavily-used body part, socks acquired an association as a symbol of wealth, something it didn’t shed until the early 20th century.  Today, of course, socks are virtually ubiquitous in this country, from nearly sheer, elaborately designed dress socks to thick, squat, white gym socks to, yes, cowboy boot socks.

Now that you’re in a stocking’d froth, we’d imagine you’d like to see what socks we have to offer.  Just like with our excellent selection of cowboy boots, we only select the best to provide our customers.  In the case of cowboy boot socks, the best comes from Thorlos Socks, which, as you’ll see if you’ll check that link there, are the product of extensive research into how the foot lives and plays.

More specifically, we have Unisex Thorlos Western Dress Socks, which are fashioned with so much attention to detail you’d think they were built by a luxury car company.  Such details include variable padding along different parts of the foot to best facilitate the demands of walking and to protect against unwanted rubbing inside the boot, and a stretch nylon top designed to stay above the top of the boot.  We’re not normally huge tech buffs around here, but in the case of Thorlos socks, such attention to cutting-edge design is definitely appreciated.

Women’s Old Gringo boots

First, a little bit about Old Gringo boots: The company was founded in 2000 by Yan Ferry and Ernie Tarut.  The two men formed an excellent, mutually beneficial partnership, since the two merged Ferry’s world-renowned bootmaking skills with Tarut’s experience in the leather manufacturing and wholesaling business.  Anticipation (and demand) of the products these two would produce was high, and western wear stores around the world rapidly snapped up the delicious footwear being served up by Old Gringo.

There are over 130 steps taken in the manufacturing of an Old Gringo boot, and not one of them doesn’t require the precision and feel of a human hand.  They are brilliantly conceived, intricately crafted, and expertly executed cowboy boots.  The result of such fine attention to detail includes boots like the striking Old Gringo Ladies’ Elvis boot, which features a truly striking black-and-white avian design.  Other excellent boots include the Ladies’ Old Gringo Elvis Mad Dog boot, which features chocolate brown and red dyes on python skin, and the Old Gringo Ladies Gabriela boot, its black calfskin adorned with red flowers.

You can find all these excellent boots, along with thousands of others, at our store in the heart of the South Congress shopping district.  Not from Austin, and not passing through anytime soon?  Browse around on our website, which features many of the boots we have to offer.  You’re sure to find something you’ll love.