You’ve probably seen her before: the bohemian Texan woman. His style, as the name suggests, is both western and bohemian. She’s a bit of country, a bit of rock ‘n’ roll, the child in love with Dolly and Stevie. Her look begins with the basics: denim, turquoise jewelry and cowboy boots. Then come the individual touches to mix and match: rhinestones, animal prints, leather, suede, lace, fringes, chevrons, crosses, cow skulls, bandanas or scarves, hats of various shapes and sizes, and T-shirts. declarations proclaiming “Wanderlust and Rodeo Dust”, “Ride More, Worry Less” and “Kiss My” on a donkey image.

Texas bohemian style seems to resonate with a certain type of woman – she’s adjacent to the west, but not actually lassoed and riding (and if she is roping and riding, there is much more to his identity than Wranglers and Corders). She has self-diagnosed her own urge to travel and considers herself a dreamer. The look is hyperfeminine, a sartorial cousin of the blonde haired stereotype of Dallas. Texas boho is more than a style; it is an atmosphere of pride, independence and strength in femininity. It is voiced by those for whom daring and daring are birthrights and subtlety is the cause of yawning.

Although bohemian Texas women live statewide, many of them converge on the small town of Round Top each spring and fall for the world-famous antique show. Round Top is also the home, all year round, for Junk Gypsy, the store and ancestor of Texan boho.

“People would always ask, ‘What’s your style, is it shabby chic? Is it western? Explains Amie Sikes, who, along with her sister Jolie, founded Junk Gypsy. “We would always say, ‘This is Texas.’ “

The falls Original Round Top Antique Fair is now running until October 30. During the spring edition, in March and April, Junk Gypsy was packed, despite the pandemic. Shoppers perused immersion-tinted babydoll dresses, displays of silk scarves, dozens of jewelry, and chunky belt buckles bearing the words “Junk Gypsy” and “Mama Tried”. They considered candles, toiletries, home decor, blankets and distressed furniture. On two occasions I have heard Jolie Sikes say to disappointed customers, “Sorry, it’s sold out. Above the buyers like a moon was a giant neon wreath. The sisters, you see, are the queens of this style. Amie and Jolie Sykes grew up in Overton, a “one-light town” in east Texas that they describe as “our little Mayberry” on the Junk Gypsy website. They “had grown up a bit of a cowgirl, but not totally,” Amie recalls. “We weren’t doing rodeos, but we had horses. . . We just felt like there were so many different things playing out in our personal style. At Texas A&M, where the two sisters went to college, neither felt quite comfortable with the rodeo crowd or the city crowd. They preferred to put together looks from spared finds, incorporating country (but not quite Western) and free-spirited (but not quite hippie) elements. In 1998, they decided to turn their style into something marketable. British-born “shabby chic” was on the rise at the time, but the Sikes sisters were doing something else, swapping the English countryside for the Texas ranch and injecting color into the pale, romantic aesthetic. At state markets and tradeshows, they sold flea market finds, vintage or upcycled furniture, and t-shirts of their own design, including one that read “Well-bred women rarely do the trick. history “, a lesser-known quote of the time. Less than three years after the founding of their company, the sisters were on the Today’s show and in Fortune Small Business. They designed Miranda Lambert’s tour bus and then a wedding reception for the country star’s wedding to Blake Shelton. HGTV called and the nation quickly tuned in to watch the sisters renovate Texas homes to their then new and hard to categorize style.

The Sikes ‘style lasted, perhaps due to the sisters’ ability to adapt it to new finds in flea markets. Their decision to open an eight thousand square foot headquarters in Round Top, the flea market mecca, in 2013, couldn’t have hurt either. An estimated 100,000 people descend on Round Top in the spring and fall, and Gypsyville, as the sisters call their resort, is now a destination in its own right, with a Junk-O-Rama prom (canceled during of the last two years due to the pandemic) and live performances on the porch corresponding to the antique fair. In 2018, Amie and Jolie opened the Wander Inn on the property behind the store, creating a mecca for their pilgrims. Their latest project: a range of road travel accessories, available at gas stations in Buc-ee.

As Junk Gypsy grew in popularity, her style spread, like so many bluebonnet seeds, to other women, who opened their own boutiques. Gypsy pearl sells cheetah and cow footprints in Fredericksburg, Fort Worth’s Hippie Cowgirl Couture has lots of turquoise, and the Dirty bohemian—Also in Round Top — offers refurbished snaps and throws. “Some of my biggest influences are definitely the Junk Gypsies,” says Megan Smith, owner Sookie Sookie, a turquoise-inspired jewelry brand and boutique that appears at events across Texas. Smith, whose grandparents worked cattle and whose father is a taxidermist, says she sometimes felt like an outsider like the artist to the family. She felt an affinity for the aesthetics of the Sikes sisters.

But Amie and Jolie Sikes are the first to say that the soul of what they do dates back to 1968, when Emma Lee Turney started the Round Top Antiques Fair. Now an international draw, the event was then largely a destination for Houston socialites, who traveled to the countryside wearing cowboy boots and mink coats. The mix of high and low – Turney, who died in March, named a 1998 book on the history of the antique exhibition Denim and Diamonds—Provides ancestral #inspo for a new style.

“It started in 1968, and that’s still what we do. We always do denim with rhinestones or a sequined jacket, ”says Amie. This eclecticism – a little of this, a little of that – is a defining element of the genre, the seed of the maximalist inclination of Texan boho and its inherent individualism. It is also the reflection of the State which made it germinate. “Texas is so much bigger than this style alone,” says Amie.

The state is a hybrid; not quite southern in the vein of Georgia or the Carolinas, but not quite west either. Elements of Texan boho nod to the various influences of Texas: the sarapes and turquoise jewels recall West Texas and our neighbors, Mexico and New Mexico; Distressed band t-shirts and free-spirited soul talk evoke cosmic cowboys and the musical heritage of ’70s Austin; rodeos and cattle work are reflected in denim, wide-brimmed hats, leather and cow prints; and the prints and colors – loud, sometimes awkward, even – again refer to this archetype of boisterous and proud Texan woman.

“The girls in Texas are like, ‘We’re western, we’re from Texas, and we wear whatever we want to wear,'” says Gabrielle Sage, a western fashion Instagram influencer and intern Junk Gypsy. “It influences other people to think, ‘Wear whatever you want. Be loud, wear all the prints if you want to wear all the prints, or wear all black if that’s your mood. “

Texas boho has also evolved to merge elements of the state’s rural and urban identities, reflecting that the Texas boho woman is just as likely to live in a large metropolitan city as a small town. “People fall in love with western fashion who don’t live a western lifestyle,” says Sage. “I don’t work the cows. I don’t live on a ranch, but I love western fashion. Shops such as the good girls, in Rockdale, and Western gringa, at Leakey, incorporate more modern sensibilities. The former adopts cleaner lines and less busy prints and colors, while the latter pushes an urban black-and-white palette with bolder fonts. At the same time, urban aesthetes continue to favor a Western look that began to take hold in mainstream circles last year, when Charm said the western trend “safe and sound. Big retailers such as Old Navy, Everlane, Forever 21 and DSW offer cowboy-style boots and Western-inspired shirts. Meanwhile, Urban Outfitters and Reformation are selling ‘cowboy’ jeans, and the print cowhide, made somewhat daring in an urban setting, can be purchased as a dress, pants, or clog.

In an age of endless minimalism and homogeneity in fashion and interior design, Texan boho has not only survived but thrived, finding its way into the mainstream and on influencers who may not have never even had a reason to see an IRL cow. The Good Babes and Western Gringa both sell internationally, with large audiences in Canada and Australia. But of course, it is not about the state in which the clothes are worn. When you wear bohemian Texan style, with wild silk rags fluttering in the wind and distressed denim that belies the soul of your dreamer, it’s all about the state of mind.