Frye Women's Fashion Brand

An American icon, Frye can be seen on streets all around the world. The Frye Company is an American boot manufacturer that, by its own accounts, is the oldest continuously operated shoe company in the United States. In 1863, John A. Frye opened the doors to the very first Frye shop on Elm Street in Marlboro, Massachusetts. Hold the account's own qualifier honestly - by its own accounts - and the claim is still the brand's centre: a boot company tracing continuous operation to a Massachusetts shop of 1863.

A bootmaker's longevity is a different kind of fashion fact from a designer's season. Boots are bought for years, resoled, reheeled and worn across climates, and a company that has sold them since 1863 has had its construction tested by more winters than any trend cycle can offer. For women, the profile's subject is specifically the women's Frye footwear brand - boots first, as the company's name for itself insists: an American boot manufacturer, whose range today the shopper meets as boots, shoes and sneakers.

Global Brands Group and the Made in USA Collection

The Frye brand is a member of Global Brands Group (GBG), one of the world's leading branded apparel, footwear, fashion accessories and lifestyle product companies. GBG designs, develops, markets, distributes and sells goods for its portfolio of brands including Frye, Spyder, Juicy Couture, Aquatalia, Buffalo Brands and Jones New York, as well as for its extensive portfolio of licensed brands. That membership is the modern corporate frame around the 1863 name: a heritage boot brand held inside a branded-goods group, alongside labels a shopper will know from other letters of this directory.

The manufacturing picture is equally plain, and equally important to state whole: the brand has a mix of domestic manufacturing as well as imports from other countries. Within that mix, the Frye Company's exclusive Made in USA Collection features boots, shoes and sneakers that represent the very best of home-grown, American craftsmanship and style. So a Frye shopper has a real choice inside one brand - the general range, made domestically and imported, and the flagged Made in USA Collection above it - and should shop knowing which side of that line a given pair sits on.

Judging Leather Boots Well

Judge boots as the long purchases they are. Leather should feel substantial and even, with a finish that will take conditioning; stitching and welting at the sole - where a boot's working life is decided - should be clean and robust; and the last should fit with room for the socks the boot will actually be worn with, bought at the end of the day when feet are honest. A harness or riding style should hold its shape standing empty, and zips, buckles and pulls should work with a gloved hand's confidence, not a fingernail's care.

Care repays a heritage boot like few other purchases: rest pairs between wearings, keep trees in them, condition leather before it dries rather than after it cracks, and reheel before a worn heel damages the boot's balance. An American icon since a Marlboro shop opened in 1863, a member of Global Brands Group, made domestically and imported, with a Made in USA Collection as its craftsmanship flagship - Frye's women's boots are best bought the way boots were bought on Elm Street: slowly, in the right size, for years of streets.

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