really?

Northern Mexico Pointy Boots Crews

In January 2012, New York City-based photographers Alex Troesch and Aline Paley traveled to Matehuala, Mexico and captured some wonderful images of the Los Socios and Los Parrandero crews wearing some very long and pointy boots. TIME LightBox recently published the set of images and they report that in “northern Mexico, the pointy boots trend is more about flash than fashion.”

“They’re worn by people who want to impress other people,” Troesch says. In fact, one boot maker they met had transformed a regular pair of shoes into pointy boots for a client who wanted to impress the jury of a dance contest. That’s how the fervor started—but not everyone is a fan. “Sometimes you’d hear people teasing others about wearing the boots,” Troesch says. “Still, it was very interesting for us to witness how such a common object—cowboy boots—worn by so many people in northern Mexico could be reinvented and reappropriated by young teenagers whose eyes and ears are so many times directed towards the other side of the border.”

Members of “Los Socios” pointy boots crew, posing on the rest of an old mining field of Matehuala.

via LightBox, Design You Trust and Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser of Awesome

photos by Alex Troesch and Aline Paley for