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Nashville Booted

@nashvillebooted

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The world’s destination for vintage cowboy boots
History • Collecting • Exceptional boots for sale
Nashville, Tennessee
#vintagecowboyboots

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There is a quiet history scattered across America, tucked into dusty attics and long-neglected closets

These are not only boots; they are artifacts of Americana. They hold the stories of the craftsmen who stitched them and the people who wore them—the miles walked, the dances danced, the lives lived. For decades, this vintage gold has been sitting in the dark, patiently waiting for its second act.

At Nashville Booted, we believe these pieces deserve more than to be forgotten. We are on a mission to uncover them, dust them off, and bring them back into the light. It is a revival of sorts—a dedication to saving the artistry of the past and giving it the public mantle it so richly deserves.

Every stitch is a testament to enduring quality. When you wear a pair of these boots, you aren’t just making a statement; you are carrying tradition forward. taken in Nashville, Tennessee by @nashvillebooted

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6 months ago

Recently, @westernhorseman featured Nashville Booted in their September issue, and I couldn’t have been more excited to be part of it. What a fun ride it’s been, showcasing a craft I’ve come to know and love.

Sharing this passion with all of you has become one of the great joys of my life. Finding so many people who share that same appreciation makes it even better. We get to admire these incredible boots together, learn about the people who made them, and keep their stories alive.

Knowing that my vision for Nashville Booted, and the work I put into it every day, resonates with so many of you means a great deal to me. I’m having as much fun as ever, and I still wake up every day excited to hunt down the next remarkable pair and see where its story leads. Thank you for being part of it and we are honestly just getting started. taken in Nashville, Tennessee by @nashvillebooted

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17 days ago

There’s a certain timeless quality to the best boots ever made. And often, it’s those with a little wisdom in their heart and soul who recognize it instinctively.

So it came as no surprise to me that @elise__dean was drawn to these remarkable 1950s Acmes in the most vibrant shade of green. Elise has always struck me as someone who values authenticity, and there are few things more authentic than an old pair of cowboy boots—made in an era when Western wear was still an honest expression of the people and places that shaped it.

At the end of the day, what we choose to wear is one of our purest forms of self-expression. And every so often, a design comes along that simply doesn’t need to be improved upon.

These boots are proof of that. More than seventy years later, the color, the lines, and the character still feel completely alive. They capture a spirit and an individuality untouched by time. taken in Trophy Club, Texas by @nashvillebooted

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2 months ago

Happy National Day of the Cowboy Boot!

There aren’t many things in American fashion that have remained as iconic as the cowboy boot.

What started as practical footwear for working cowboys eventually became one of the most recognizable expressions of American style. Along the way, boots found their place on the feet of Hollywood stars, musicians, artists, and just about anyone with a little individuality and attitude.

And the craftsmanship behind so many of these old boots is something I never get tired of appreciating. The colors, the designs, the attention to detail. Some of the boots made 50, 70, or even 90 years ago are perhaps even more impressive today than they were when they were new.

One of my favorite things about doing what I do is knowing that there’s always another incredible pair out there waiting to be discovered. After all these years, that excitement hasn’t changed a bit.

So here’s to the bootmakers who brought these incredible creations to life, the people who wore them, and all of you who share my appreciation for this wonderful piece of American history.

Long live the cowboy boot! taken in Nashville, Tennessee by @nashvillebooted

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11 days ago

Swagger. Attitude. Boldness.

Vintage cowboy boots have never been short on any of them. In a world that seems increasingly comfortable fitting in, there’s a lot to be said for standing out.

Consider the people whose style we’re still talking about decades later.

Jimi Hendrix, wearing paisley and fringe with a swagger that made every inch of it feel natural.

Steve McQueen, wearing denim and boots with a quiet swagger that made even the simplest outfit unforgettable.

Dolly Parton, turning her love of rhinestones and extravagance into something unmistakably her own.

Part of what made them unforgettable was the conviction with which they wore their clothes. They gave their individuality room to show.

These boots are for those who want their style to match their charisma. Combine irreplaceable designs with a patina that only comes from decades of life well lived, and you have a true icon. taken in Nashville, Tennessee by @nashvillebooted

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20 days ago

There are some things that don’t ask to be remembered. They simply endure.

The oldest cowboy boots remind us that the finest things often outlast those who made them. They outlive the bootmakers who stitched them, the generations who wore them, and often even the stories they’ve carried through time. Yet somehow, they still tell their story.

For years, only a handful of us seemed to appreciate what made them so extraordinary. Lately, though, it feels like more people are beginning to listen. Not because they’re fashionable, but because they’re real. And in a world full of things made to be replaced, there’s something irresistible about an object that refuses to disappear.

Every time we uncover another early pair, it feels less like finding a boot and more like crossing paths with a forgotten piece of the American story.

I’ve never needed a reason to love these old boots. But it’s a beautiful thing to watch so many others fall under their spell.

And if you think the stories have been good so far… keep your eyes on the horizon. The next chapter is already on its way. taken in Nashville, Tennessee by @nashvillebooted

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3 months ago

Torres Boot Company. Raymondville, Texas.

A pair of 1950s Torres customs — made for a woman named Diann — from the Nashville Booted collection.

Her name inlaid right into the pull straps in cut leather letters. Red, black, cream, and gold. Sunbursts on the shafts. Butterflies on the heel counters and toes. Braided lacing running the full length of the boot. Every inch of these is handwork.

Leopoldo G. Torres was born in 1921 in León, Guanajuato — the bootmaking capital of Mexico. He started working at 17, likely under one of the many master bootmakers in León. He learned fast. He owned his own shops in Guanajuato, Guadalajara, and Matamoros before he ever set foot in Texas. These boots came from that era — the 1950s — when Torres was already a master craftsman working out of Mexico.

In the mid-1960s, he crossed the border into South Texas. He worked in boot factories and alongside other bootmakers — possibly even Abraham Rios at the Rios Boot Company. But the money wasn’t enough to support his family. Torres and his wife Josefa, whom he’d married in León, had 14 children. So in 1971, he opened his own shop in Raymondville, Texas — 246 South Seventh Street.

From that small shop, he built a reputation that reached far beyond the Valley. South Texas sheriffs. King Ranch cowboys. New York filmmakers. Polo boots for Prince Charles. Together with Abraham Rios, Torres helped make Raymondville one of the boot capitals of the world — the birthplace of what collectors now call “border boots” or “valley boots.”

His sons Roy, Raul, and Frank all worked the shop. The family was Raymondville — Don Polo even owned the local drive-in theatre. In 1997, Raul and Frank reopened the business with their father as advisor.

Leopoldo G. Torres passed away on May 17, 2005, at the age of 84. The shop is gone. But the boots remain — including this pair, made decades before Raymondville, when a young bootmaker in Mexico was already perfecting his craft.

From the Nashville Booted collection. taken in Raymondville, Texas by @nashvillebooted

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2 months ago

The 1940s were part of a broader era when rodeo, Western films and singing cowboys helped give colorful, elaborately decorated boots a wider audience. Bootmakers had been experimenting with ornament long before then, but the screen and stage gave that imagination another place to be seen.

That creative ambition is part of what makes the best work from this period so interesting. The skill wasn’t only in making a boot. It was in deciding how far a design could go, and knowing how to bring all of its parts together.

There’s nothing timid about the design of this 1940s pair.

Red and yellow across the feet. Green, purple and dark blue climbing the shafts. Scrolling forms that continue around the backs, with contrasting lacing at the collars and striped pull straps. There’s a lot happening, but it feels considered rather than crowded.

Not every boot from the decade looked like this. That’s what makes a pair like these worth looking at closely. They show how much room there was for individual expression within an already established form.

We tend to talk about vintage boots in terms of what has survived. These also deserve attention for what was imagined in the first place. taken in Nashville, Tennessee by @nashvillebooted

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4 days ago

Lucchese Boot Company. San Antonio, Texas.

Two pairs of 1940s customs — monogrammed “SLS” — from the Nashville Booted collection.

Multicolor inlay work like this represents the absolute peak of Lucchese’s San Antonio era. Pink, sage green, powder blue, and cream leather cut and stitched by hand into vine and leaf patterns, with floral rosettes on the counters and braided lacing along the collar. Every detail executed with the precision of a family that had been building boots since 1883.

Salvatore “Sam” Lucchese arrived in Galveston from Palermo, Sicily in 1882 with his brother Joseph. They opened a small shop near Fort Sam Houston the following year, making boots for cavalry soldiers. By the 1940s — under Sam’s son Cosimo — the company had evolved from a military outfitter into the most sought-after custom bootmaker in Texas.

This was the era when Hollywood came calling. Bing Crosby, Gene Autry, and eventually LBJ all wore Lucchese. But it was the private custom work — boots like these, ordered by individuals who wanted something no one else would ever own — that defined what the San Antonio shop was truly capable of.

The “SLS” monogram tells us these were made for a specific person. Two pairs in complementary colorways, same initials, same level of craftsmanship. Whoever “SLS” was, they understood what they were commissioning.

142 years later, Lucchese is still making boots by hand. But pairs like these — from the golden age of the custom shop, before mass production, before corporate ownership — are irreplaceable artifacts of American craft.

From the Nashville Booted collection. Now preserved in the archive. taken in San Antonio, Texas by @nashvillebooted

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3 months ago

Nocona Boot Company. Nocona, Texas.

A pair of 1940s Noconas from the Nashville Booted collection — hand-tooled floral shafts with turquoise inlay and red star medallions. Eighty years of wear and they still tell the whole story.

Nocona Boot Company was founded in 1925 by Enid Justin — “Miss Enid” — the daughter of H.J. “Daddy Joe” Justin, who started Justin Boots in 1879. When her brothers moved the family business to Fort Worth, Enid refused to leave. She stayed in Nocona with $5,000, seven employees, and a conviction that her father would have wanted boots made where he’d always made them.

She was the company’s first salesperson. Loaded a Model T Ford with boots and drove dirt roads across Texas, selling to whoever would look. She also sold washing machines, delivered coal, and packed lunches for oil field workers — whatever it took to keep the shop running. By 1934 she was president. By the 1940s, Nocona was one of the top five boot companies in the country.

These boots came out of that era. The tooling is dense and deliberate — every vine, every petal, every leaf cut into the leather by hand. The turquoise inlays at the collar and lower shaft. The compass-star medallions with red leather backing. The whipstitched collar edge. This is what a Nocona looked like when Miss Enid was still walking the factory floor.

She ran the company until 1981, when she sold to Justin Industries — her brothers’ company. She was 87. She lived to 96. The town of Nocona, Texas still carries her name on its identity.

From the Nashville Booted collection. Now preserved in the archive. taken in Nocona, Texas by @nashvillebooted

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2 months ago

Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors. North Hollywood, California.

A pair of 1972 Nudie boots — silver metallic leather with royal blue inlays — from the Nashville Booted collection.

Geometric cutout work on the vamps and heel counters. That Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors label stitched inside. These were made to be seen from the back row of any arena in America — built in the shop on Lankershim Boulevard when Nudie Cohn was still running the floor.

Nudie Cohn was born Nuta Kotlyarenko in Kiev in 1902. His parents sent him to America at age 11 to escape the pogroms. He arrived with nothing — worked as a shoeshine boy, a boxer, a drifter. Met his wife Bobbie in a Minnesota boardinghouse. They opened a shop making rhinestone costumes for showgirls in New York, then moved to California in the early 1940s and started making Western wear out of their garage.

By 1950, Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors was open in North Hollywood. By the 1960s, he was dressing Elvis, Hank Williams, Roy Rogers, Johnny Cash, Porter Wagoner, Gram Parsons, John Lennon, and anyone else who understood that the stage demanded more than the man alone could give.

He made Elvis’s gold lamé suit. He made Gram Parsons’ marijuana-leaf jacket. He made Porter Wagoner’s wagon wheel suits — 52 of them over the years. He customized 18 Pontiac Bonnevilles with silver dollar dashboards and longhorn hood ornaments. He wore mismatched boots every day — said it reminded him of when he couldn’t afford a matching pair.

These boots were made in 1972. Silver and blue — flashy, unapologetic, pure Nudie. He was 70 years old. Still in the shop. Still making boots. Still the original Rhinestone Cowboy — twelve years before Glen Campbell borrowed the name.

He died in 1984. Bobbie and his granddaughter Jamie kept the shop open until 1994. Jamie reopened it in 2015. The legacy continues.

From the Nashville Booted collection. Now preserved in the archive.

P.S. — The song you’re hearing is “Sister Golden Hair” by America. They were Nudie clients too. @nudies_rodeo_tailors taken in Hollywood, California by @nashvillebooted

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2 months ago

In 1932, a bootmaker named Archer LaForce settled in Tucson, Arizona and opened the Western Boot Company on East Broadway. LaForce had learned his craft working alongside Gus Blucher at the H.J. Justin factory in Texas before the two left together in 1915.

But nearly a century later, it was something tucked inside a pair of his boots that brought one of LaForce’s customers back to life.

Inside the shaft of these burgundy longhorns was a card from the Yellow Cab Company of California — Safety Engineering Department. It certifies that a Mr. Eli Horwitz completed his driver’s examination. The date: January 28, 1953.

Right next to where the card was found: the original Western Boot Co. cloth tag, sewn into the shaft. Written on it in faded ink — “Eli Horwitz.”

LaForce eventually spent four decades in the desert Southwest building some of the finest handmade cowboy boots in America. His clients included writer and artist Will James — the man behind Smoky the Cowhorse and one of the most iconic figures of the romanticized American West. A pair of LaForce boots made for James around 1930 sits in the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City today.

These burgundy longhorns are pure LaForce. The white steer-head inlays. The sweeping feather-and-leaf stitching. The elaborate combination of inlay and decorative stitching is characteristic of the kind of handmade work Western Boot Co. was producing during the LaForce era.

But this pair came with something most old boots never do: a name and a piece of the life attached to it.

Seventy-three years ago, a cab driver in California owned a pair of custom Archer LaForce boots from Tucson. His name, his profession, and the exact date all survived together inside these boots, untouched, waiting to tell their story. taken in Tuscon, AZ by @nashvillebooted

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2 months ago