Investigative Journalism
Where did you buy your cowboy boots?
Bridget Devine investigates the business behind the boots so you can get in on the Western fashion trend this summer, just with a bit more ethical and environmental awareness of the leather industry under your belt.18th March 2025
Mexican Made Cowboy Boots © Wild Wild Western Wear
Carly Nunn, the owner of Wild Wild Western Wear commented, ‘All I can say is it’s been an extremely busy month,’ and ‘I was lucky enough to go to C2C on Sunday where I bumped into quite a few of my customers’. One of my close friends also bought a pair of boots from Carly’s store, meanwhile some have found one-of-a-kind pairs in second hand and vintage stores across the country. Others with less time to unearth the perfect fitting pair opt for faux-leather, mass produced cowboy boots from brands such as Zara and Asos. A lot of these are made from oil based synthetic materials which are polluting and unsustainable but leather boots are made from animal hides that concern animal welfare and methane emissions. So the question isn't where did you buy your cowboy boots, but where should you buy your cowboy boots?
Cowboy boots are one of my favourite fashion items simply because like all good fashion staples, they are the result of functional design. It was at the end of the civil war in 1865, when the first iteration of what we know as the cowboy boot was created. Cowboys found their leather military boots from the war weren't cut out for long hours riding in stirrups. So, in the 1870’s one clever cowboy went to a cordwainer in Kansas or Texas (debated by many and no one is 100% sure which), and created a bespoke boot with durable stitching, high shafts, angled heels and pointed toes. These were then sold to the public in the late 1870’s, specifically, the first store in America was in Coffeyville, Kansas where they went for $12-$20 a pair (not cheap at the time) and the rise in popularity was all down to them being the most functional and long wearing boot for cowboy ranching work. Then came the 1930’s Hollywood glamorization of the cowboy lifestyle in the Western film genre. This transformed the cowboy boot from a merely practical accessory to an increasingly mainstream fashion statement where brands started capitalising on the elaboration of the cowboy boot, using different dyes, leathers and stitching techniques.
For US and Mexican cowboy boot makers, the leather is sourced from local tanneries. Jeremiah Craig, a musician and ‘Cowboy Boot Enthusiast’ visited the Los Altos factory in Léon, Mexico for a YouTube video series. Léon is the unofficial shoe capital of North America and is the epicentre of modern day cowboy boot production that produces more boots a year than any other city on the continent, according to the Thursday Boot Company. Jeremiah described the factory as, ‘Clean, well-lit and efficient’. He explained,
‘Working conditions seemed fine but the workers weren’t paid very much. That's the draw to have boots made in Mexico and sold in the US. It keeps prices down’.
This is the focus for most factories across the country except with recent events affecting the tariffs between Mexico and the US, there is a chance this system may change and almost certainly costs will increase for US consumers. Jeremiah makes the point that, ‘The majority of boots that are affordable to the public, are affordable because there were corners cut in production’ and unfortunately, ‘Most consumers want a low price and don’t care how or where their boots are made’.
Historically, the tanning process that converts skins to leathers through oxidation was done using barks, leaves, fruits and roots - specifically in England and America, oak bark was a very common material for leather tanning. Whilst some tanneries still use these natural materials, the rise of chemical tanning using chromium sulfate is where the problems occur when looking at working conditions. Nishanth Chopra, founder of Oshadi Collective, an Indian clothing brand that operates a sustainable Seed-to-Sew supply chain, explains,
‘Chromium sulfate is cancerous, it's a heavy metal poison. None of the dryers and curers wear protective clothing due to the heat so they are exposed to harmful chemicals that are rubbed into their hands’.
The main component of the cowboy boot is of course leather and while the supply chain for boot production is fairly accessible, the actual production of the leather used is, frankly, much harder to uncover. ‘The leather sourcing wasn't very transparent when I visited the factory’, Jeremiah explains. According to Leather Naturally, 99% of leather worldwide is produced from livestock as a by-product of the meat industry. The platform also highlights that currently leather is the most sustainable way of up-cycling hides and skins from the meat industry which annually, ‘Saves 7.3 million tonnes of hides that would otherwise go to landfill’.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) releases a National Daily Cattle & Beef Summary which indicates the daily drop value of cattle slaughter. As of Monday 17th March, this year, the report shows a steady increase in prices and production, for example the current cutout value is at $321.16 up 2.89% from the prior day. Reports such as this one and others from the Leather and Hide Council of America demonstrate that hides are solely a by-product of the dairy and meat industries, not a driver.
This of course brings us to the ethics of leather as an animal derived natural resource. I spoke to Eliza Craig, a fashion journalist who visited a well known leather tannery in the Agafay Desert near Marrakech, Morocco. She talks viscerally about the conditions in the tannery, ‘They had beams across the vats where they were treating the leather, beside the vats were cut open animal carcasses. It smelled disgusting’. Whilst Morocco isn’t known to produce cowboy boots, it does demonstrate how much tannery practice varies across the globe. Nishanth also talks about India’s leather tanneries, ‘Tanneries are ten times more toxic than any other textile. Whether killing cattle for meat or leather, it's inhumane and the methods of killing are very bad, such as vacuum killing’.
This however, is very different to the standards in North America, which is why the handmade Mexican boots tend to come with a higher price tag as the tanneries have to comply with the USA Animal Welfare Act (1966) which heavily regulates the treatment of animals by the USDA. Carly says this as a critical part of her job when sourcing cowboy boots from Mexico, ‘We get updates from all the companies we use when they change things with their animal welfare - I am very thorough when choosing my suppliers and these are questions I ask before I commit to becoming a customer of theirs’.
‘Some of my Mexican leather boots are now coming up to 30 years old and still going strong - I don't think I have ever owned a plastic pair that has ever lasted more than a few months’,
Carly explains. Jeremiah seconds this saying, ‘I have a pair of boots that I've had for almost 20 years and they've had 7 resoles’.
The main faux-leather on the market that is mass produced is leatherette, a high quality vinyl material which is derived from oil, a non-renewable resource. Invented in the 1920’s in Connecticut, leatherette or pleather is now made in Chinese and Vietnamese factories for fast fashion brands. Hence being used for many mass produced cowboy boots, for half the price and half the environmental consideration.
Carly, who has to advise customers about not just fit but also materials and longevity, says, ‘Faux-leather does not last anywhere near as long as leather boots - especially when you can get leather boots re-heeled and resoled giving them an even longer wearing life. Faux-leather in my experience doesn't give the comfort and support of a proper handmade pair of boots.’
Alternatives such as Piñatex pineapple leather, Malai coconut leather and MYLO mushroom leather are much more environmentally friendly as they are composed from agricultural waste that would otherwise go to landfill, ‘Saving the equivalent of up to 12kg of CO2 from being released for each metre of textile produced’ according to Ananas Anam. Nishanth says, ‘Nature always has answers’.
‘Imagine if we put 250 years of time and resources into coconut and pineapple leather research, we would probably have the most fantastic, more functional substitute material for leather than any animal skin (or chemical material).’
Both agricultural and animal leathers save waste going to landfill and in-theory are biodegradable, ‘Leather is a natural product that will decompose when the boots can't be worn anymore,’ explains Jeremiah. However this depends on the finishing and treatment of the leather, for cowboy boots natural tanning methods such as veg tanning using oak bark are more common for US tanneries such as Hermann Oak and Horween, which means they are more biodegradable than chemically treated leathers.
Alice Robinson is a co-founder of British Pasture Leather, a leather company using traceable regenerative agriculture, she sources animal leather from Pasture for Life certified farms that ensures, ‘Cattle are raised solely on a diet of diverse pasture and forage - no grain, soy or other feed is permitted - this differs greatly from the vast majority of cattle raised for beef globally’. This is an example of a brand that marries natural animal leather with ethical and sustainable values, and if implemented globally could completely transform the landscape of the leather industry.
‘When it comes to leather, its origins are in agriculture and how we produce food now and into the future will have an impact on biodiversity, soil health, ecosystem function and our resilience to climate change.’ Alice’s ethos focuses on the cyclical nature of the regenerative leather, which is a reflection of the original cowboy boot. Cowboys work on ranches farming their cattle for meat and hides, all whilst wearing the very product of their labour on their feet - in the form of the iconic cowboy boot.