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Tecovas boots are displayed on two walls in the main room at the Tecovas South Congress location on Thursday, Sep. 25, 2025 in Austin.<\/p>\n
Aaron E. Martinez\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n
I love a cowboy boot as much as the next Texas-born gal. I\u2019ve got three pairs of Tecovas, a vintage pair of Justins I scored at Texas Thrift and an ancient pair of impossibly pointy boots I bought in college for football games. They hurt like hell, but they\u2019re pretty.<\/p>\n
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Few afternoons are better than wandering through Tecovas with a cold drink in hand, surrounded by the smell of fresh leather.<\/p>\n
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But there\u2019s something afoot on South Congress. In just a few years, the street has gone from having a couple of dedicated cowboy boot stores to feeling like one giant Western wear showroom. At some point, the question stopped being whether another boot shop would open and became: How many does one street need?<\/p>\n
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Allens Boots is one of several boot sellers on South Congress Avenue.<\/p>\n
Beck Andrew Salgado\/American-Statesman<\/p>\n
Allen\u2019s Boots has anchored the corner of South Congress Avenue and Monroe Street since 1977, and it\u2019s an Austin institution. It\u2019s where I tell visitors to go if they want to try on Texas. Heritage Boot Co. opened two blocks away in 2005. For nearly 15 years, those two stores largely had the market to themselves, joined by vintage shops and a handful of retailers that happened to sell boots.<\/p>\n
Then, in 2019, Tecovas moved in.<\/p>\n
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Now, if you\u2019ve lived in Austin longer than about five minutes, you know South Congress has transformed over the past decade. Aviator Nation sells California a couple doors down from the Continental Club. A beloved costume shop gave way, in part, to a national running shoe retailer. A quirky embroidery shop became a Hey Dude store. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.<\/p>\n
So no, the growing number of boot stores probably isn\u2019t the biggest thing worth lamenting on South Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, it\u2019s a little weird.<\/p>\n
Since Tecovas opened, King Ranch Saddle Shop has arrived. Lucchese opened two doors away. Kendra Scott launched Yellow Rose, complete with its own cowboy boots. This year, Ariat opened a storefront. Now Wrangler, Alberta Boot Company and Cody & Sioux are headed to the former Vespaio space.<\/p>\n
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Yellow Rose by Kendra Scott South Congress flagship location on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024.<\/p>\n
Mikala Compton\/American-Statesman<\/p>\n
Cowboy boots, of course, aren\u2019t some newly minted Texas symbol. Historians trace the modern cowboy boot to the years after the Civil War, when Texas and Kansas bootmakers designed durable footwear for cattle drives. In 2007, the Texas Legislature <\/a>made the cowboy boot the official state footwear.<\/p>\n Western wear is also having a moment. Cowboy-inspired fashion has returned to runways. Country music is booming. \u201cYellowstone\u201d and \u201cLandman\u201d helped make ranch aesthetics aspirational again. It makes perfect sense that retailers want in, especially on one of Austin\u2019s busiest tourist corridors.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s also what feels strange. South Congress isn’t simply adding another boot store. It’s devoting more and more of its storefronts to selling an increasingly polished, increasingly expensive version of Texas.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n