Bootmaker
Carman Allen
Carman Allen is a custom bootmaker in Fort Worth, Texas, who started out as a bull rider and chap designer before shifting to boots. A 2002 magazine profile notes his detailed tooling and trademark lightning-bolt motif, with boots built one last at a time and popular with the cutting-horse crowd.
History
Carman Allen was a custom bootmaker at 8616 Quebec Drive in Fort Worth, Texas, profiled in Joe Nick Patoski's June 2002 Texas Monthly roundup. He had formerly been a bull rider and chap designer before shifting to boots. His specialties were detailed tooling and a trademark lightning bolt, priced from $650 with an eight-to-ten-month wait, and his clientele came from the cutting-horse crowd.
His own website describes made-to-measure boots built on a last fitted to the customer's foot, with stitched, inlaid, overlaid, or tooled tops, but it does not print a founding year, street address, or the bull-riding background. He is a different person from a Carman Allen credited on a Nashville-area listing, from the Carman Allen described as H. J. Justin's wife in the Handbook of Texas, and from a Dallas-Fort Worth construction executive of the same name.
Known for
Former bull rider; trademark lightning-bolt tooling