Exhibit Work
You’ve heard of Boot Jack and Cavender’s Boot City, but today comes a new competitor to the western store scene, Texas Hermes. Texas Hermes is a new, up-and-coming boot store, with one unique intention: bringing back the Old West aesthetic to western apparel shopping. For starters, we have a poster whose design comes straight from the nineteenth century, granted with an updated modern look, with the star product from and center. Following that, there is a brochure catalog for customers to glance through in search of the right boot that fits their style. The presentation was inspired by the catalogs of Sears, Roebuck and Co. from the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, unlike Sears, Roebuck and Company, Texas Hermes’ catalog presents its products in full color, for a more visually accurate look. Finally, we have promotional photographs showing off a pair of boots with a print statement similar to that of “antique” photographs.
The name Texas Hermes comes simply from the concept of, “Hermes, but what if he’s a Texan.” Hence, the logo features a pair of boots with Hermes’ signature “sandal wings” attached to them. The origin of wanting to do a boot store is my love for the Western Style and the “Old West.” I’ve been dressing in a Western style since I was a toddler, whose boots are actually featured here in the exhibit, hat and all, (minus the spurs). My interest in the “Old West” goes just as far back from eight-year-old me wearing a cowboy hat and playing with a cap gun revolver, the toy revolver that had the red strips that “sounded” like a gunshot, to reading Louis L’Amour books like Chancy and Ride the River and watching John Wayne movies like El Dorado, War Wagon, and The Undefeated, as well as Burt Lancaster movies like The Unforgiven and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Years later, here I am, with an opportunity to do an exhibit on something that truly means something and matters to me. May my work give you even a fraction of a glimpse into a time long forgotten.
