The Ones You Come Back To: Lizzy Bentley of CITY Boots on Round Top, Design, and West Texas Influence
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Time to read 4 min
Crafted with premium materials, these boots are built to last. Each CITY Boot features over twenty design details and undergoes more than 200 meticulous steps in the production process.
It All Comes Back to Boots
The miles on Highway 237 that make up Round Top have a little magic in them. Somehow, they just manage to stay with you, whether you meant them to or not.
If you’re like Lizzy Bentley, you might even realize that Round Top becomes a kind of map — showing how you’ve grown, what you’ve built, and who you’ve become along the way.
For Lizzy, CITY Boots is a pin on that map. Every year she’s returned to Round Top has mirrored a year she’s been building the brand: both of them shaped over time, broken in, and made stronger with wear.
It all makes sense, really, that it comes back to boots: the one thing that walks with us through it all.
Where It all Started
Growing up in Amarillo, cowboy boots were simply part of Lizzy’s daily life. They were something worn without much thought, and woven into the everyday life in West Texas. But when Lizzy arrived at SMU, she saw not everyone saw them the way she did.
"Boots were always just a part of what we wore as a family,”
“And when I took that with me to college in Dallas, people would stop me all the time asking where they could buy a pair.”
And she didn’t have a clear answer.
There wasn’t a single place to send them, especially not one that felt designed with women in mind or balanced authentic construction with something beautiful and wearable. So she built it.
A Decade Into CITY Boots
Now, years later, both she and the business have grown up together. As CITY Boots marks its tenth year, the brand has moved through a decade of change — one that’s come with shifts in the market, new names entering the space, and the constant evolution of how people discover and shop.
And then there’s everything happening in Lizzy’s life alongside it. The personal changes that don’t pause for business, but shape it anyway, often without asking.
For Lizzy, many of those moments have unfolded at Round Top.
Along Highway 237
“I have a really special place in my heart for Round Top,” she says. “I started going probably ten years ago with my aunt and her friend Cheryl. They’ve been going for thirty years, twice a year, and have stayed at the same place nearly sixty times. They’ve only ever missed for weddings and funerals.”
At first, Lizzy would come for a day or two at a time, tagging along, learning it all from two women who knew Round Top by heart.
“My aunt is one of my favorite people,” she says. “I’m her namesake. So I would just go and be a little part of their history there.”
Now, Round Top is a part of her history, too — and it’s a part of CITY Boots itself.
The CITY Boots Women
“This is our customer. This is where she wears the boot,” Lizzy explains. “These are stylish women from all over who are open to taking a risk — women whose lives are centered around sisterhood, friendship, exploration, and fun. That’s such a big part of who we are as a brand, and why we keep coming back to Round Top.”
From their booth, it’s so easy to see how the two come together.
“Welcoming people into this world is important,” Lizzy says. “There’s no need to gatekeep it. Round Top is such a cool place to do that.”
On any given day, that might look like a group of friends passing through, trying on pair after pair, or someone stopping in who never quite saw herself as a “boot person” before. Before they know it, they’re leaving with a pair of their own.
“I met some girls from Minnesota the first day,” she says. “They spend a lot of time in Austin, and they were just having the best time and wanted boots. I was like, you girls are our customers.”
That’s what CITY Boots does best: never convincing someone to become something they’re not, but showing them that they already belong here, and that the boot was never out of reach in the first place.
In The Details
It’s why CITY Boots don’t strip away what makes a cowboy boot, well, a cowboy boot. They lean further into the meaning each step carries, from the romance and the tradition to the authenticity.
“There’s something about the cowboy that’s just… romantic,” Lizzy says. “And part of that is the authenticity behind it, behind living off the land, and the way of life.”
You can see it in every detail of a pair of City Boots, whether you’re looking at the construction, the materials, or the way each pair is designed to live within your closet.
“I spend a lot of time thinking about color,” she says. “Growing up, my dad and brother wore really colorful boots—sometimes you wouldn’t even see it unless they sat down. My brother had a pair with bright pink tops. Boots have always been a way for people to show their personality.”
She brings that family tradition to the designs behind each CITY Boot, sifting through leather swatches and searching for the elusive colors that feel distinctive but wearable.
“You want something that stands out and feels special,” she says, “but also goes with a lot of things.”
There are bold ones, of course — the pink pair with bone-colored hearts, the sky-blue pair stamped with a lightning bolt — that are the outfit the moment you put them on.
But it’s the pairs with the smallest details that define the brand.
“I’ve always said I want them to be the pair you grab when you don’t know what to wear,” she says. “A lot of them have something subtle about them that makes them slightly unique.”
Those are the ones you come back to, year after year, just like Round Top. And, as Lizzy knows, those are the pairs that carry you through more than you expected.
They go with you through seasons you planned for, and the ones you didn’t. Somewhere along the way, they become part of you.
Maybe they’re a pair of CITY Boots you pick up in a booth, somewhere in a tiny Texas town called Round Top, along those 11 miles of Highway 237. Maybe, they’re the pair your mom bought you in high school.
But either way, they’re yours. And either way, they carry your story.
