While other young women were given family heirlooms or jewelry for major life events, sisters Lizzie Means Duplantis and Sarah Means always received one thing: a new pair of cowboy boots. Starting in high school, milestones from birthdays to graduations brought new additions to their boot collection. The gesture was fitting. The sisters grew up on a fifth-generation cattle ranch outside the West Texas town of Valentine. Their uncle and cousins own a workshop that manufactures boots, including those of the venerable Texas brand Rios of Mercedes, which has sold handcrafted boots for 160 years. Last year, the duo decided to (quite literally) follow in their family’s footsteps by opening Miron Crosby, a boot brand based in Dallas’s trendy Highland Park Village that’s become a hit with savvy fashion-lovers across the country.
Photo: Steven Visneau
The Margretta boot.
“We both have an entrepreneurial spirit and wanted to own a small business together for a long time,” Duplantis explains. Still, the decision to launch their line took time. After college, both women moved to New York City. Duplantis joined a hedge fund while Means went into fashion, working for the upscale shoe brand Loeffler Randall. Although their closets were compact, each brought about ten favorite pairs of boots to the East Coast and kept them in constant rotation. “Everyone was really enamored with them and with the whole idea of the West and the cowboy,” Means says. In early 2016, while the two were back home toasting Duplantis’s birthday, they got serious about giving the business a shot. They relocated to Dallas and brought on a classically trained designer to help execute their vision. Their first collection consisted of fifteen designs and 169 pairs of boots. The name for the brand came about easily. Miron is a play on the name of their great-grandfather Marion Otis, while Crosby references one of their favorite streets in New York City as well as the name of a pasture on their family’s ranch.
Photo: Steven Visneau
Sisters Lizzie Means Duplantis (left) and Sarah Means.
The boots come in tall, medium, and short versions for women, as well as styles for men and children, and the sisters aim to stay true to time-honored Western silhouettes and craftsmanship while also looking forward. “We’re all about crafting for a lady who doesn’t just want the traditional male boot design slightly tweaked to work for women,” Duplantis says. Their process includes inspiration-gathering trips all over the South and Southwest. Everything from Frank Lloyd Wright architecture to Navajo and Zuni handicrafts to the Texas night sky informs the patterns, while the leathers are hand lasted by artisans at the sisters’ relatives’ factory. For their spring release, the two women took a more playful sartorial angle, incorporating metallics and higher heels. Using their bespoke service, buyers can customize any design—or have a special date or handwritten note sewn into the liner.
A mix of modern and Western, their airy shop features exposed brick with a bar and minimalist shelves. A white marble table stocked with exotic leathers anchors the space. It’s not unusual for the sisters to mix up a batch of “ranch water”—a blend of Topo Chico, tequila, and lime—for cocktail hour and visit with customers as they browse the turquoise jewelry and concho belts alongside the footwear.
In the future, the sisters plan to roll out a round of nationwide pop-up shops. As for their own boot assemblage, they each now have about forty pairs, though that total is not likely to stand. “We’ve started collecting vintage boots, so it’s getting a little out of hand,” Duplantis says. “They really are pieces of art.”
