Politico: 3 Expert Shoemakers Say Ron DeSantis Is Wearing Height Boosters

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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.”

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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.”

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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.

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