Of course it is no secret we are going through an odd time in the world. I honestly had to go out searching for new content. But I love fashion no matter the state of the world, and I love the wild wild west so here we are. We’re off the rodeo road, we’ve had big life events canceled and there’s going to be a quite different NFR season we know already. I’m not going to tell you what to buy and wear this fall or winter most likely. BUT I’m going to distract you for a minute and tell you about the leather makers not too far from snowy river, YES the same snowy river where you could find Jim Craig.
Branded Feathers Co was born from a love of travel, western fashion, turquoise, leather, music and the cowboy lifestyle in general. It is a mix of traditional western and eclectic one of a kind designs, offered for both retail and wholesale. Each of the leather designs are hand crafted from the highest quality leathers, many times the Kate & Cory import the leather hides from the USA to Australia, to then spend days to create the item and send it right back to America, there are a lot of logistics involved in making one piece that people aren’t aware of, but you can’t take the easiest route if you want to make heirloom quality items. Now let’s meet the makers.
Kate Rankin met Cory Clark in a bar at Cheyenne Frontier Days. Kate was attending CFD all the way from Australia, after being invited to model in the fashion show. Cory, a professional bull rider from Oklahoma, was passing through between rodeos. Kate and Cory had their own businesses at the time, Kate had previously mined her own turquoise in Nevada and had a leather, graphic design, turquoise and silver business in Australia, whilst Cory was busy as a professional bull rider and leather maker. Six weeks after the fateful meeting and whole lot of missing each other , Cory packed up, left his home and moved to Australia, where they both now reside to this day on a farm with their children, not all that far from where the iconic “Man From Snowy River” was filmed, though they still have a shop in South West Oklahoma which they also use as their USA home base when coming back and forth between the countries multiple times a year.
Both Kate and Cory grew up riding horses, playing music and still spend time as paid musicians on the side, they seemed to mirror each others lives both growing up in cowboy worlds on opposite sides of the globe. Kate grew up on a large cattle and sheep farm in southern New South Wales Australia, left high school at seventeen to work on big cattle stations in the Northern Territory of Australia, whilst Cory pursued a rodeo career with his full ride bull riding scholarship out of high school, and living on his family ranch working cattle and training rope horses, before stepping up to the professional Bull Riding world.
Cory started doing leather work as a hobby his junior year in high school, completely self taught, he started out making simple wallets for his friends and family, which has now progressed to making anything from rodeo chaps, intricately tooled belts to ladies purses and earrings.
For the last six years he has been shipping his designs worldwide, marketing only through social media and word of mouth, well before the days of their now online store. Kates’ leather designs are less traditional focusing on putting her art and graphic designs on the leather and combining it with her silver and turquoise, together they bring a variety of complementary western design elements to the table.
Kate had been making sterling silver jewelry for family and friends since eleven years old as a hobby. She was buying in turquoise from the USA for her silver jewelry, and was offered the opportunity to mine her own turquoise from the renowned Royston and Blue Moon Turquoise mines, back in 2016. Kate quickly bought a ticket and flew to Las Vegas, hired a camper, after spending some time at The Indian National Finals Rodeo networking. She drove to the mines alone, where she broke down large rocks laden with turquoise veins, filled the back of her van with the raw turquoise, and slept in the drivers seat for some of her trip.
She shipped some of the raw turquoise to Australia, and left the rest stored in the USA. When she arrived home to Australia she had to learn how to cut and cab all the raw turquoise from an elderly lapidary artist, a big learning curve as most folks buy pre cabbed turquoise to put in their jewelry, but Kate wanted to have her hands on every stage of her creations.
Kate also being a qualified graphic designer uses her hand drawn illustrations to create logos, promotional materials and T-shirt designs for many companies all over the world, along with offering website design. Branded Feathers Co is very unique, offering many resources under one business name. This business truly is where the old west meets the outback, and where family meets passion, run by two people who understand the importance of quality and going the extra mile to get the best results, in life and in business.
You can find their work via their online store,
or on instagram
@branded_feathers