1 year ago
In the last few weeks, posts mocking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ strangely shaped cowboy boots have racked up millions of views on Twitter and TikTok, with online sleuths trying to determine whether he’s wearing height-boosting insoles to pump himself up against a 6’3” primary frontrunner with a penchant for nicknames who reportedly considered calling DeSantis “Tiny D.” (If the 2001 Yale baseball team roster is to be believed, DeSantis stands at 5’11”.) Posters have sketched over photos of the boots, showing where they think DeSantis’ feet sit inside. “Slay queen,” captioned one TikTok user. Hashtags like “parisfashionweek” and “mallgothfashion” abound. And former President Donald Trump himself even shared one of the posts on Truth Social.
It sounds vain to fret over height in a political race, but DeSantis has reason to worry: Over the last century or so, taller candidates have tended to have an advantage in general elections — with the notable exceptions of former President Barack Obama, who is shorter than Mitt Romney, and President Joe Biden, who is shorter than Trump.
Three top experts in the field say the cowboy boot truthers might be onto something.
“I’ve dealt with these politicians many times,” says Zephan Parker, the bespoke bootmaker behind Houston’s popular Parker Boot Company, which, he says, has made height-increasing cowboy boots for a number of Texan politicians. (No, he won’t reveal any names.) “I’ve helped them with their lifts. [DeSantis] is wearing lifts; there’s no doubt.”
For Parker, there are two giveaways. At a DeSantis campaign event in Tampa, a photo was taken of him from his side, showing the governor in his black cowboy boots and navy worsted suit. Traditional Western boots are typically built with an elevated heel, ranging from 1 1/2” to 1 7/8”. DeSantis’ boots have a traditional Western silhouette, but, to Parker, the heels appear shorter. When you stick inserts into cowboy boots, the combination of the height-increasing lifts and the heels can “turn them into five-inch stilettos,” Parker says. “That’s too much for the common man. So on a ready-made boot, they’ll cut down the heel about half an inch to accommodate the lifts, which looks to be what happened here.” (Shaving down the heels does negate some of the height value of having lifts in the first place.)
The other giveaway, Parker says, is the boots’ tops (what most people would recognize as the shaft). Cowboy boots are made to fit snugly; on their website, Tecovas recommends getting boots sized so that you feel a rush of air leave the boot when your heels drop into place. But such a snug fit leaves little room for a wedge-shaped lift, so people who wear lifts often have to size up in width. This increases all the other measurements in tandem, including the circumference of the tops.
Looking at the photo of DeSantis at his Tampa campaign event, Parker points out how the tops are pushing against his trouser legs. “He looks like he’s wearing trousers with an eight-inch opening,” the bootmaker estimates, “which is plenty of room for a Western boot on a man of his proportions.” The fact that the tops push against the trouser legs suggests to Parker “the boots are bigger than intended, probably to accommodate his lifts.”
DeSantis’ campaign denies the allegation that he’s wearing lifts. On Monday, DeSantis told podcast host Patrick Bet-David that his boots are “just standard, off-the-rack Lucchese boots.” In an email to POLITICO Magazine, DeSantis’ press secretary, Bryan Griffin, writes, “Considering the fact that Politico Magazine admittedly spent money to consult ‘boot experts’ to run this hit piece on DeSantis tells you all you need to know about their ‘journalism.’ The governor doesn’t pad his boots, but if he ever needed anything to line a pet cage or fold up and wedge under a table leg, that would be the highest and best use for Politico Magazine.” (To be clear, POLITICO Magazine did not compensate any of the boot makers quoted in this story. Also, POLITICO Magazine does not appear in print. —Ed.)
Graham Ebner, an Austin-based cowboy bootmaker who trained at Texas Traditions — widely considered one of the country’s best bespoke cowboy bootmakers — also suspects the governor is wearing lifts. “Three things stick out to me,” he says, “the instep, the toe spring and where the ball of his foot is sitting in the boots.”
In shoemaking, the term “instep” refers to the area of your foot where shoelaces usually sit. Ebner notes that almost every photo of DeSantis shows an unusually high instep that angles nearly 60 degrees, pushing the leather outward and making it unusually taut. This high instep showed up when DeSantis campaigned at the Iowa State Fair, meeting voters mid-stride while wearing jeans and his campaign’s fishing shirt, as well as when he spoke to guests at the Family Leadership Summit over the summer. “Instead of the leather hugging the inside arch of his foot, as it should, it looks like his foot is being lifted up and stretching out the leather,” Ebner says.
The toe spring — a technical shoemaking term for how the toes curl up — is also much more pronounced than normal, says Ebner, suggesting to the bootmaker that DeSantis’ toes are too far back in the boot and there’s nothing inside to hold them down. The ball of the foot similarly appears oddly placed, he says. “In the photo of him sitting on the wooden stool, you can see where the ball of his foot is protruding on the right boot,” Ebner says. “It’s a good inch behind where it should be. It should not be in that position unless the heels were being lifted dramatically.”
Nicholas Templeman is a London-based shoemaker who worked for seven years as a lastmaker — someone who creates the wooden form that determines the shape of bespoke shoes — at John Lobb of St. James Street, the oldest continually operating bespoke shoe-making company in the world. Today, he has his own firm and serves as a judge for the World Championships of Shoemaking, an annual competition held in Europe. He notes that DeSantis’ boots have a very unusual wrinkle high up on the decorative tops (a shoemaker’s term for the boot’s shaft). “In London, a four-piece boot like this is called a half-Wellington,” Templeman explains. “On a half-Wellington, the vamp seam — the horizontal seam that sits near your ankle — curves up at the front because this is where your ankle bends. You wouldn’t make a boot so that the ankle bends at the tops, especially on a cowboy boot, because the decorative stitching makes this area weaker.” For Templeman, the bending in this area on DeSantis’ boots suggests that an interior wedge is lifting DeSantis’ heel up, causing his ankle to crease an area higher than designed. “If you put your foot into a regular pair of Western cowboy boots, that area is just going to be your shin, which doesn’t bend,” he says.
Templeman also notes that DeSantis’ boots have a lot of material hanging over the welt (the stitching that connects the sole to the boots’ uppers, the part of the shoe that covers the foot), which is likely caused by his foot being seated incorrectly. “The front of your foot is wider than the middle. So, if you put lifts inside a pair of ready-made boots, you’re going to put the front of your foot in the middle of the boot, which is not shaped for the widest part of your foot. This will push out the leather and cause it to hang over the boot.” Plus, DeSantis’ shins look unusually long for his proportions — an effect likely caused by standing on his tippy toes, Templeman says.
There are ways to make lifts look natural, but they require a few trips to a bespoke shoemaker, not buying ready-made cowboy boots in a slightly larger size and slipping ready-made lifts inside, which the experts say DeSantis appears to have done. Creating convincing height-boost footwear involves a few things: a boot or shoe that’s made to fit the foot when the heel is lifted, some clever concealment (on a low shoe, this will be a higher topline, so the shoe sits higher on the foot), and some planning (e.g., splitting the difference between the increased height gained from the lift and the cowboy boot heel, so neither is doing the bulk of the work).
The million-dollar question: How high do these shoemakers suspect DeSantis’ lifts are? Each estimated them to be about 1.5” — high enough to make a difference in his appearance, so long as you don’t look too closely at his feet.
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