Don’t mosey into the new Tecovas store in Leawood looking for jeans with rhinestones on the pockets. The Texas-based brand, founded by born-and-raised Texan Paul Hedrick, specializes in ostrich boots and plaid pearl button shirts but tends to take an understated approach.
Hedrick founded the brand in late 2015 as an online-only store before opening his first retail shop in Austin in March 2019. From the start, he “saw a pretty big gap in the marketplace” for a high-end Western wear brand that bore no resemblance to Nudie Suits.
“We were pretty disciplined—our first five or six years especially—in building an understated Western line of things that don’t go out of style,” Hedrick says. “If you’re going to buy one cowboy boot and keep it in your closet for a long time, what would that look like and feel like? That’s definitely where my instincts were guiding me.”
That’s changing a bit as the brand has grown, which visitors to the line’s twenty-first retail shop in Town Center Crossing (4419 W. 119th St., A128, Leawood) will see.
“If you look at some of the stuff we’re releasing now, we’re really starting to fill more of those gaps with things that will add more interest to people’s wardrobe,” Hedrick says. “If you’re going to buy apparel from a Western brand, you want it to be truly Western. If you’re going to wear a pearl snap, it should look like a pearl snap.”
