A Boot Collector Feature
A decade-long El Paso shop that sold better in Paris and Tokyo than it ever did in Texas, closed by a downturn in 1989, and still turning up on collectors' feet in boots that haven't cracked yet.
According to vintage-boot dealers who've handled his work, Garner Moss started his own shop in El Paso in the early 1980s after building his career at Acme Boot Company. The company he founded lasted only about a decade before an economic downturn forced it to close around 1989 — one detail not independently confirmed elsewhere, so worth treating as reported rather than certain. What's more consistently noted is where the boots actually sold best: not in traditional boot country like Texas or Oklahoma, but overseas, in fashion markets like New York, Paris, and Tokyo, where the style found an audience that more conventional Western wear didn't always reach.
Surviving Garner Moss pairs are valued today for holding up: dealers describe original outsoles still intact, leather that's stayed supple and uncracked decades after the shop closed, and construction using materials like kangaroo leather and Cat's Paw heel pads. Reported celebrity clients include Arnold Schwarzenegger and actor James "Jim" Drury, names that circulate in the vintage market alongside the boots themselves, though — like the rest of this history — they come from resale and collector sources rather than the company's own records, which didn't survive its closure.
A shop that closed before a lot of today's collectors were buying boots is still the name they look for when a pair shows up that hasn't cracked yet.
Pairs from smaller, custom, or long-closed makers rarely come up for sale, so this search may not find anything. It’s worth checking back now and then.