KENNER, La. (WGNO) – Welcome to Sylvester’s, where what you see is what you get.
It’s been owned by Ronnie Sylvester for forty years but Western wear has been in his family for eighty.
“Honest to God, my dad, I used his name and he helped me buy the merchandise and what have you but I built the store myself. When I moved in the store was 5,000 square feet and then I added on another 7,000 square feet,” says Sylvester.
And they need every foot! Along with antique furniture, belts, hats and other item, he estimates they have 25 thousand pairs of boots. He’ll even saddle your horse! “We don’t sell as many saddles as we did in Baton Rouge. Unless you go across the lake, you don’t have a place in New Orleans to stretch horses out but they still have stables around and we still sell some saddles but it’s not like it used to be.”
And neither is the fashion. Long gone are the days of John Wayne and Wynonna… Enter the cosmopolitan cowboys and cowgirls.
“It’s so main stream now, it’s all about high fashion now. You can take your Western and put it with your fashion from L.A. and it’s great,” says Lisa Sylvester, Ronnie’s wife.
When it comes to Western fashion you can never go wrong with rhinestones.
“A lot of bling, they all wear the fashion jeans like Miranda Lambert. That’s real fashionable now with all your younger generations.”
Country music has been a major influence in their business, the dresses and shorts are shorter, the shirts are shinier and they outfit all ages.
“They have the country fest now, which brings in a much younger generation now which really has helped the whole Western business,” says Lisa.
The artists who win big at awards shows are always wearing the most requested looks. “Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert are the two, always the Kenny Chesney hat, we do carry the line of Kenny Chesney hats,”
Mixing the old grit with modern glam… that’s the Sylvester family business.
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