If you think there’s nothing new in Western wear, that all cowboy boots look the same, you should look at things through Jaylin Ramer’s eye.
“Cowboy boots are a canvas,” explains Ramer, founder of Planet Cowboy. She started her brand in New York in 2013 (having sold other boots before that), and moved it to Nashville in 2020. She now has a store in 12South, plus a warehouse shop (with great deals) on Lindell Avenue. She designs and collaborates with other designers to create boots, scarves, T-shirts, hats, bolos, belts and buckles, often with bright colors and graphics that are fun and sexy but never twee. Hats, like the Teardrop Twist Flat Brim, offer a literal twist on the classic felt hat shape. The Western Twilly, a long scarf made from Italian silk, features Western outer space graphics and is designed to work as a headband, a neck scarf, a belt or a hatband. All around, the result is a line of Western goods that locals are proud to wear — and that appeals to tourists who want a piece of Nashville to take home too.
Ramer is of course aware of larger fashion trends — shortie boots are less popular right now, and tall boots are back — but she tends to draw inspiration from the world around her. “One time, I was looking out the window of a plane,” she says. “I looked at the wing and the design on the wing and I thought, ‘That would look really cool on a boot.’ Inspiration comes to me randomly. I’ll look at a leaf, and I think, ‘That would look really cool on a boot.’” She also leans on 1950s, 1960s and 1970s aesthetics and classic Western looks to develop her modern take.
Because Ramer is a designer and an entrepreneur, her collections don’t feel random, even if her muses do. She works with factories in Mexico to handcraft the boots she designs, collaborating on the use of high-quality leather, colors and structure so that the boots are both comfortable to wear (“like a slipper with arch support,” she says) and long-lasting. “Future vintage,” she likes to call them. While she prefers to sport “fresh” boots every year, she’s also proud that her customers can wear a pair of Planet Cowboys for 20 or 30 years. Because a canary-yellow boot with rainbow stitching will never go out of style.
Talking to six of the city's most interesting designers and checking out some of Nashville’s best street style
