Lucchese

Lucchese is the boot a man buys when he has stopped asking what boots cost and started asking what they are built on. The answer, in this case, is a last with a twist in it. We will get to that.

Where it started

In 1883, two brothers from Sicily, Salvatore and Joseph Lucchese, opened a small boot shop near Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.¹ Their first customers were cavalry soldiers who needed boots for long days in the saddle.¹ Salvatore, called Sam, came from a family of shoemakers in Palermo.¹

The family ran the company for three generations. Sam’s son Cosimo incorporated it as the Lucchese Boot Company; after Cosimo died in 1960, his son Samuel J. Lucchese carried it forward.¹ Ownership passed to Blue Bell in the 1970s, and in 1986 the company moved to El Paso.¹ Wikipedia records the El Paso move as a headquarters transfer and notes the main production facility is still there.² The company changed its name to Lucchese Bootmaker in 2012.²

Along the way it collected a client list. The company’s timeline records King Ranch’s Robert J. Kleberg Sr. buying a pair in 1921, Bing Crosby by 1942, and a State Boots Collection launched in 1949 celebrating U.S. states through their symbols, flowers and birds.¹ Lyndon B. Johnson was a customer for decades.²

The twisted-cone last

Every Lucchese boot is built on a proprietary twisted-cone last developed by Sam Lucchese, grandson of the founder.³ It is wider at the ball, tapers at the toe, and carries a slight twist so the cone of the instep turns toward the inside of the foot, the way a real foot does.³ Lucchese says the best-fitting boots always come from a last with an inside cone, and that it keeps using this one even though it costs more money and skill to make.³

The company also says, to its credit, that no last will properly fit more than 85 percent of people.³ That is the most honest sentence in western bootmaking, and it is why we keep a fitting room.

How the boots are built

Lucchese says a single pair takes between 150 and 200 individual steps in its El Paso factory.³ The upper is wetted, pulled over the last by hand and tacked; once it dries, the sole is pegged.⁴ The company uses both brass and lemonwood pegs depending on the style. Pegging keeps the hand-lasted instep’s fit and makes it possible to resole the boot when the soles wear out.⁴ Lemonwood, Lucchese says, expands and contracts with moisture at almost the same rate as leather.⁴

On exotics, the cutting room matches skins by marking, tile size and pattern, and may compare 20 to 30 skins before finding a pair close enough to sit side by side.⁴

How Lucchese sizes

Lucchese says its boots generally run true to size, but your western boot size may come out slightly smaller than your dress shoe size because of the construction.⁵ The company’s own fit points:

• Toes rest comfortably, and the ball of the foot sits in the widest part of the boot.⁵
• The instep should feel like a firm handshake. New, that can feel uncomfortably tight; Lucchese says it softens with wear.⁵
• A slight slip in the heel is normal at first and does not mean the boot fits badly.⁵
• Because the boots are hand-lasted, each pair differs slightly, and the leather molds to the foot with wear.⁵

Pull them on with both fingers through the straps, keep the heel down, and listen for the thump as the foot drops in.⁵ If you hear it, the last is doing its job.

What to buy first

Start where Lucchese started: a plain cowhide or goat western in black or a dark brown, on a classic toe, with a leather sole you can have resoled later. Let the twisted-cone last introduce itself without an exotic skin shouting over it. When that pair has broken in and you know your size on this last, the exotics can come down from the shelf.

The Boots floor carries the Lucchese styles we have checked. Every buy goes through our link and the retailer is the seller.