Beyond Beyoncé’s influence, the western boot was popular long before her 2024 album Cowboy Carter. An advance look at autumn-winter 2026-2027 collections at Micam in Milan in February suggests the trend will continue for a long time yet.

The western boot trend endures. The influence of singer Beyoncé has no doubt helped. There was certainly a surge in demand for cowboy-themed products after the release of Cowboy Carter in 2024. This album generated 76 million streams on Spotify on the day of its release. Fashion editor of The New York Times, Vanessa Friedman, said that, in her opinion, Beyoncé had made Western aesthetics “the look of the moment”.

A few Manhattan blocks away, however, the style news editor of The Wall Street Journal, Sarah Spellings, has a different take. She points to Raf Simons’ debut collection for Calvin Klein in February 2017 as the starting point for this most recent revival, but she describes the cowboy and western look as a trend with a “really long lifespan”. Nine years on from Raf Simons, and almost two years on from Cowboy Carter, there were western boots on every row of every hall at Micam in Milan this February. This means there will still be cowboy-style boots in many brands’ collections until autumn-winter 2026-2027, at least.

Ms Spellings is betting it will last even longer. “All trends peter out eventually,” she says, “but for some, the cowboy boot is a really stable shoe.” She offers the Lucchese Boot Company, based, fittingly, in Texas, as proof of this. The company was founded in San Antonio in 1883, but moved to El Paso in 1986. Now, around 240 footwear artisans work at its factory there, making around 400 pairs of boots per day.

Touch of class

Manufacturing director, Óscar Sánchez, explains that the boots are still made in the same way as when the company’s founder, Sam Lucchese, originally from Sicily, set the business up. To this day, a pair of hands touches each pair boots 180 to 200 times in the course of the construction process. The tasks the skilled workforce have to carry out include structural stitches that attach the vamp to the shaft. There are also ornamental stitches that go around an inlay or a cord to give the boots their distinctive, decorative, western look.

“We pride ourselves on fit,” Mr Sánchez says, “and we use a twisted cone last that is made anatomically like the human foot and, thus, has the best fit possible on a cowboy boot. This last was brought from Italy when the company’s founder first came to the US.” Pegs made from lemonwood are also part of the construction. These small wooden pegs are functional, not decorative. They hold the shank in place and “move with you when you walk”, the manufacturing director says.

Vice-president for product, Doug Hogue, says preserving some “old-world manufacturing techniques” is part of Lucchese’s commitment to craftsmanship. There are “opportunities to take short-cuts”, but he insists the company defiantly passes these up out of “respect for the process”. Mr Hogue says a greater source of worry is the maintenance of the machinery the company has in place. His colleague, Óscar Sánchez, agrees. He points out that some of the machines are 80 years old, and others have been in use for 50 or 60 years. If they break down, sourcing parts is a challenge. Mr Sánchez says Lucchese’s own mechanics have become adept at finding ways to keep the machines running. He also shares that the company’s longest-serving boot-making craftswomen and men prefer to work on the older machines.

Materials matter too. Director of design for women’s collections, Holly Mery, names no names, but claims Lucchese sources leather from “the best tanneries around the world”. These include “very carefully curated” exotics, with “no expense spared” for some of the boots in the company’s collections. Ms Mery also claims to have had a pre-Beyoncé influence on the current popularity of cowboy-style. She designed a boot called the Priscilla in early 2020. “There were a lot of over-the-knee boots in contemporary fashion at that time,” she recalls, “but western had not really tapped into that tall-boot trend. Bringing this to life at Lucchese was new for us.” She believes it is thanks to this that tall, white cowboy boots are part of the global trend. “You see them all over now, which is really flattering,” she adds.

Price range

Back at Micam, not all the western boots on offer were in the “no-expense-spared” category. Perhaps one of the indications that the trend has cut through to all market segments is that brands and manufacturers from all over the world are now offering these styles. Most of the time, Eddy Ling manages a sheepskin boot brand, based in Jiangsu Province in China. He sources double-face sheepskin, made from Australian raw material, from Henan Prosper. But in addition to these, he also had western boots on display in Milan. He explains that he has a friend in Jiangsu who has been making boots in this style in a factory there for a number of years and wants to raise the profile of this collection. It includes boots for people to wear to work (not as cowboys), with specialist, technical, anti-slip soles.

Mr Ling says the boots all go for export, 80% to the US, 15% to Europe and 5% to Australia. His friend is using the brand name Palitutu for the boots, which ship to the US for a wholesale price of around $60 per pair. He thinks they will sell in retailers in the US for up to $300 per pair, still around one-third of the price of the cheapest Lucchese boots. Demand is strong: in late 2025, his friend had to open a dedicated warehouse facility in Texas to fulfill orders for Palitutu products.

Global phenomenon

Footwear companies from other parts of the world that also had on-trend western boots on show in Milan included Indian manufacturer Tirubala Group, Brazilian brand Luiza Barcelos, and Efetti (complete with generous helpings of rhinestones), Inuovo and Loie, all from Turkey. Italian brands contributing to the continuation of the trend included Naples-based Gisèl Moiré, part of a company that Gennaro Albergo founded in the 1950s. His daughter, Imma, now runs the company with her brother, Salvatore. She says the brand is serious about preserving its traditions but is also open to trying new ideas. Gisèl Moiré launched its first collection of cowboy boots for women in 2025. “They are proving very popular,” Ms Albergo says.

Other brands appear to have made attempts to advance or at least personalise the trend with their own touches. Examples include Belgian brand Cycleur de Luxe, who had on display a range of cowboy boots with hair-on ponyskin. “You have to try something different,” founder and creative director, Patrick Vanneste, says. “You have to stand out.” A brand from La Rioja in Spain, José Saenz displayed boots that had exotic-looking leather at the top, complementing the rest of the shaft, standing out like a shiny, 10-centimetre snakeskin extension. In reality, it is bovine leather with a reptile pattern stamped onto it but it is eye-catching and redolent of the cowboy wave. The Spanish brand insists this was not its intention; the exotic touches are for aesthetic reasons only, it says.

Perhaps the best-named brand for this trend is El Vaquero, the Spanish word for cowboy. It was founded in Florence in 1975, as the spaghetti Western cinema sub-genre was coming to an end. As the brand’s name and 50-year history suggest, it is not among the new arrivals to the cowboy boot trend. It has always devoted itself to this style. But it, too, emphasises elements that differentiate its designs from those of the majority. Its latest collection, on show at Micam, does this most obviously in its extensive use of long fringes on the shaft. The boots’ shape is distinctive as well because their base is that of a moccasin boot, making them soft, flexible and comfortable, El Vaquero claims. New competition in this category appears not to worry the company; like Lucchese, it is in it for the long haul.

Everyday wear

A former mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser, has spoken of his devotion to the style and to the Lucchese Boot Company in particular. In a recent feature in The Wall Street Journal, Mr Leeser, who was mayor of El Paso from 2013-2017 and again from 2021-2025, admits to owning 90 pair of Lucchese boots and to wearing one of the pairs to every public function he attended during his two terms. 

Since giving up office, Mr Leeser says that he still wears the western-style boots every day, adding that if he were to attend a meeting wearing any other kind of footwear, everyone would think there was something wrong with him. He says: “Without my boots, I wouldn’t feel like me any more.”

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders always wear Lucchese boots. Credit: Lucchese

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