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Do The Two-Step In These Designer-Favorited Boots

Meet the sister act behind the cowboy boots with a New York Fashion Week runway debut

When Prabal Gurung needed cowboy boots to wear to Barbara Bush’s wedding festivities, he surfed the web and discovered Miron Crosby, a fashionable collection created by two sisters in Dallas. Five months later, he had not only a pair for himself but also eight Miron Crosby x Prabal Gurung styles strutting his runway at New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2020.

“My whole collection for spring was about who gets to be an American, defining new Americana, and I wanted to pay respect to American heritage,” says Nepalese American fashion designer Gurung. “It was amazing that I could find two women who own this business. It’s really important that women are at the forefront of the conversation, especially in fashion, especially in culture.” Once merely a pipe dream for Lizzie Means Duplantis and Sarah Means, their two-year-old brand of fanciful cowboy boots is now a thriving enterprise.

Boots were always part of life for the sisters, who grew up outside Marfa, Texas, on an expansive cattle ranch. The girls were given a new pair for every birthday and important occasion, and each was handcrafted at their cousins’ company, Rios of Mercedes, a legacy boot maker in the Rio Grande Valley. “We had a lot of autonomy over the design of our boots because of our unprecedented access to Rios,” Means says.

Brooke Crème boot.

When they moved, separately, to New York to pursue careers—Means Duplantis in finance and Means in fashion—the sisters brought their boots. “We would get stopped all the time by people asking where we got them and where they could get similar styles, but Rios doesn’t sell directly to consumers,” Means explains. “We felt like they were more elevated and fashionable than what was available.”

Sensing real opportunity in their pie-in-the-sky ambition, the sisters started working on their brand in early 2016 and launched a year later. “We started Miron when I was pregnant with my third child and Sarah was in the middle of law school—it was really good timing,” jokes Means Duplantis. “The response was validating, so we rolled with it.” Miron Crosby stays true to authentic silhouettes and superb craftsmanship while jazzing the boots up with whimsical inlays, appliqués, leather fringe tassels, and contrasting skins and colors.

Margretta boot.

Their best seller is the Margretta, a classic tall boot decorated with stars and moons as tribute to the spectacular night skies and crescent-moon cattle brand at the family ranch. “The stars are jumping—not shooting—for good luck and optimism and well-wishing,” Means notes.

Miron Crosby has a store in Dallas at Highland Park Village where you can customize boots with letters and motifs. The boots are all leather, from the stacked heel to the Goodyear welt, and from the soft lining to seams hammered flat for comfort. The sisters collaborate on design and split other duties: Means Duplantis supervises business operations, and Means oversees marketing and production.

“We worked really well from the get-go and found our lanes,” says Means Duplantis, the elder by almost nine years. “It’s really fun, and we laugh a lot. One of the struggles is because we are together so often and so excited about the business, we sometimes don’t take time just to be sisters. We really try to find the time where we can just talk about boys and shop online.”

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