Everything is customized: size, shape, heel height, stitch patterns, design and colors.
The fit is based on 26 different measurements that Christo takes of a customer’s feet and calves, using their bone anatomy for guidance.
Working with fine colored leathers, Christo has handcrafted, cut and sewn on butterflies, flowers, birds, feathers, stars, initials and much more—even, in one case, a tombstone that displayed the years of a loved one’s lifetime.
“If I can figure out how to do something for a customer, I will,” he says. “That might be an agonizing challenge because the spaces are so small, but the challenge is also fun. I truly love what I do.”
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Steve Christo, owner of Perrin Creek Custom Cowboy Boots in Gloucester, VA.
The owner of Perrin Creek Custom Cowboy Boots in Gloucester, Christo has been a bootmaker since 2014. He has made close to 200 pairs to date; a single project can take anywhere from two to four weeks depending on its complexity.
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Bootmaker Steve Christo, crafting since 2014, signs each finished pair inside the boot shaft...
Christo discovered his passion after retiring as senior engineering associate for the Physics Division at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, where he worked for 30 years. One of the only custom cowboy bootmakers on the East Coast, he opened his shop in 2017, naming it after a creek in the Bena community of Gloucester.
Now 71, Christo grew up watching the many cowboy movies and television shows released in the 1950s and ’60s. He and his friends in Altavista, Virginia, wanted to dress just like their onscreen heroes, especially when it came to their boots.
Yet as Christo approached adulthood, his feet grew flatter and wider—not a good match for factory-made cowboy boots, which already tend to be narrower in the toe than the heel. Most people end up buying a size that is too big.
“Stores want boots to look sleek, but you’re not likely to get a snug or comfortable fit and there aren’t laces to adjust them,” Christo notes. “I got tired of it, so I sat down at my dining room table and decided to make my own pair.”
While he didn’t have instructions, Christo had plenty of experience working with his hands and improvising along the way. As a boy, he had dissected and reassembled watches, cameras and motors, designed a go-kart and model airplanes, and built forts with sticks and rocks.
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...and embosses the insoles with a bespoke Perrin Creek stamp, leaving his personal mark on every creation.
Drawn to functional art, Christo majored in ceramics and minored in architecture/engineering at Ohio State; was technical manager in the Pottery Production Division at the Williamsburg Pottery—that job brought him to Gloucester in 1975; owned a pottery company; and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at Tulane University, specializing in clay and glass.
After working as professor of clay and glass at three universities, Christo pivoted to science and spent three years as a technologist in the Physics Department at Louisiana State University before joining Jefferson Lab.
Christo’s first pair of boots looked terrible, in his opinion. But they fit perfectly.
“I was hooked,” he recalls.
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Hand-drawn, hand-cut, and free-stitched on a cast iron Singer, Christo's boots are truly original works of art.
With an itch to create art again, Christo traveled to Texas for an intensive two-week class led by two high-profile master bootmakers, Carl Chappell and Mike Karnes, plus follow-up seminars and consultations. He also did a week-long course in leather inlay and overlay with another master bootmaker, Lisa Sorrell.
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Perfectly sized lasts are created from specific measurements of each customer's foot and used to shape the boots during the creation process. He writes the names of the customer on each last and saves them for possible future orders.
Through trial and error, Christo has mastered tasks such as making the front of boots look elegant yet still wide enough to fit well: “There are great visual tricks. Shape of the toe, placement of wrinkles and lines across the top, decorations—there’s a lot to play with.”
While many bootmakers only take four or five measurements, Christo is much more meticulous. Whether customers are local or from another state, they travel to him so he can create a perfectly sized “last,” or a mold used to shape a boot. He writes customers’ names on each last and saves them for possible future orders.
Some people have ordered several pairs of the boots, which cost $2,200 to $3,500 apiece. That price includes free lifetime repair services.
Susan Jeffreys, an Alabama resident, has bought three pairs since 2021, with plans for a fourth. Jeffreys, a 62-year-old structural integration practitioner, discovered Christo on a YouTube program and has enjoyed collaborating with him on boots and matching belts. Her latest pair features red ostrich and black kangaroo leather with tulips, roses and a crescent moon.
The custom-fit process also was a gamechanger for Jeffreys, who has a high arch on her slightly smaller right foot. “Steve is so careful that you feel like he’s going to sculpt your feet,” she says. “His boots are just beautiful. I wear them everywhere. I’ve even worn them with shorts to the gym. If they fit better than anything else you have, that’s what you wear.”
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Customers can choose dress boots, dance boots or functional boots designed for life on horseback and dictate details such as boot height, straight or scalloped tops, geometric or wavy stitch patterns and round, square or pointed toes.
Christo has noticed clear regional variations in taste. Take heel height: standard cowboy boots are about 1⅝ inches tall, but people on the East Coast tend to go shorter (maybe 1⅜ to 1½ inches) and those in more Western states go higher (2¼ inches is more like it in Oklahoma).
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“For a cowboy historically, having a high heel was a status thing,” Christo explains. “It’s hard to walk in them that way, which implied you’re in the saddle a lot. I think that has translated into what’s considered fashionable today.”
Christo stitches with nylon thread for durability and buys most of his leather at an annual fall trade show for boot- and saddlemakers in Texas. In addition to ostrich and kangaroo, he has cow, water buffalo, American bison, kid, alligator, snake and lizard hides.
Most weeks, Christo spends eight or nine hours daily at his shop, perhaps with slightly shorter hours on Sundays. But the married father of two and grandfather of two finds the work relaxing rather than stressful or the cause of aches and pains.
As for his “misshapen” feet, the inspiration for his current life, they are still misbehaving. “I’m growing bunions these days, so every other year, I have to make myself another pair of boots,” Christo says with a laugh. “Luckily, now I actually know what I’m doing.”
Perrin Creek Custom Cowboy Boots | 2618 Hickory Fork Road, Gloucester | Open Monday-Saturday 7am-3:30pm, Sunday 12-3pm | perrincreekcustomboots.com
