Australian boots were built for red dust and city rain in the same week, and the makers have never seen a reason to change the recipe. RM Williams crafts the iconic Australian chelsea boot as a bootmaker since 1932. Blundstone stamps its 500 series Chelsea boots from Hobart as a bootmaker founded in 1870. Rossi keeps the Australian heritage boot tradition in honest working order. The outback dries what the city wets, which is why the leather wants conditioning before the first wear and again before the first winter.
Australian dress-shoe brand founded in 1928 at the Phoenix Hotel in Collingwood, Melbourne; the Julius Marlow name was adopted in 1933. Made boots for the US Marine Corps in WWII and introduced its Crystal Sole in 1946.
Best for Australian dress shoes
Julius Marlow's story begins in 1928 at the Phoenix Hotel on Wellington Street in Collingwood, Melbourne, where founder Ivor Trescowthick started the business, choosing the invented name Julius Marlow, formally adopted in 1933. During the Second World War the company manufactured boots for the US Marine Corps, and in 1945 moved production to a larger factory on Hoddle Street. In 1946 the brand introduced the Crystal Sole, a more durable rubber sole that became a signature technical feature. The label has continued as a men's footwear and accessories brand, and in 2012 launched its O2 Motion comfort-technology collection.
Australian denim label founded in 2009 by friends from Melbourne and Stockholm; its Sydney retail outpost, the Neuw Service Store, is on Oxford Street in Darlinghurst, on the edge of Paddington.
Founded in Melbourne in 1924 by orphaned teenager Thomas Cook, this Australian bootmaker is now run by the fourth generation of the Cook family, supplying country clothing and boots to over 1,200 accounts across Australia and New Zealand.
Melbourne footwear house founded in 1972 by Italian-born shoemaker Tony Bianco, now run by his sons Anthony and Adam; family-owned, factory-partnered, known for heel-forward, leather-driven fashion shoes and boots.
Best for Australian trendy footwear
Tony Bianco was founded in 1972 in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn by Tony Bianco, who was born in Catanzaro, Italy in 1947 and emigrated to Australia with his family in 1958. He began shoemaking at 18 and started the company with his wife Michela and five employees. More than five decades on, it remains family-led, now under the direction of his sons Anthony and Adam Bianco. The label has built its identity around dynamic heel heights, considered leather detailing, and a long-standing partnership with a single trusted manufacturing factory. Tony Bianco operates nine boutiques across Australia and opened its first international flagship in New York's SoHo in 2026.
Melbourne footwear since 1946—Windsor Smith builds fashion shoes and boots with bold, contemporary styling and timeless construction for men and women.
Best for Australian platforms, boots and fashion-forward footwear
Windsor Smith is an Australian footwear brand established in 1946, originally as a men's leather shoe manufacturer and later expanding into women's collections. Based in Melbourne, the company has maintained family ownership and production oversight across nearly eight decades. The label emphasizes bold, fashion-forward aesthetics—described internally as merging "timeless style with modern flair" in menswear while positioning the women's collection as "bold, stylish and irresistibly fashionable." Product lines span shoes, boots, sandals, and complementary accessories including shoe-care products. The brand combines design ambition with practical quality standards, building a customer base that values distinctive styling without sacrificing construction durability. Windsor Smith operates an e-commerce platform with free Australian shipping on orders exceeding $120, reflecting its primary market while maintaining international reach. The longevity of the brand—now spanning multiple generations—indicates a sustained alignment with Australian fashion sensibility and middle-market retail positioning rather than haute-couture or budget segmentation.
Ariel Booksellers, established in 1985 and now at 326 Oxford Street, Paddington, is one of Sydney's oldest independent bookshops, focused heavily on art, design and architecture titles. It also stocks poetry, plays, film history and literature alongside cards, tarot decks and gift items.
Hervé Gatineau, trained in Toulouse and seasoned at Sydney's Laurent Bakery and London's Maison Blanc, opened his own Summertown, Oxford patisserie in 2007. The bakery makes bread, cakes and French pastries fresh daily, and has grown a wholesale arm supplying more than 30 sites from a Kidlington production kitchen.
Best for French-trained patissier's Oxford boulangerie, now wholesaling citywide
Hervé Gatineau trained as a pastry chef in Toulouse before working abroad, including a stint at Sydney's Laurent Bakery, then arrived in the UK in 1997 to work at Maison Blanc in London's Park Royal. He opened his own patisserie under his name in Oxford's Summertown neighborhood in 2007, bringing a French boulangerie-patisserie tradition, bread, cakes and pastries made fresh daily, to the city.
The retail shop remains the public face of the business, but Gatineau has built a substantial wholesale operation alongside it, now supplying bread and viennoiserie to more than 30 sites across Oxford from a dedicated production kitchen in nearby Kidlington. That expansion has moved much of the business's actual output away from the original Summertown storefront even as the shop itself continues to sell direct to customers.
Gatineau offers cake delivery around Oxford and takes orders through its online shop, giving customers two ways to reach a bakery whose day-to-day production increasingly serves other Oxford businesses as much as it serves walk-in customers.
Australian-made work-boot brand tracing to a 1930 Surry Hills, Sydney bootmaking business; still family-run by the Cloros family and manufactured at its own factory in Auburn, New South Wales, not Victoria.
Best for Tough work boots
Mongrel is an Australian work-boot brand whose roots go back to 1930, when bootmaker Stanley Cloros established a shoe-repair and handmade-footwear business in Surry Hills, Sydney, selling boots at local markets. During the Depression his son William Basil Cloros bought machinery from liquidation auctions to launch a full-scale operation, Victor Boot Company, which produced military boots through the Second World War and later grew into Victor Footwear Pty Ltd, expanding into work and casual footwear at a larger St Leonards facility by the 1960s. The Mongrel name was introduced in 2000 as a new boot style built on the company's Australian manufacturing heritage; it grew to become the company's primary brand. A signature innovation, the side-zip 'ZipSider' work boot, launched in 2006. Between 2006 and 2008 the company built a dedicated manufacturing facility in Auburn, in Sydney's western suburbs, deliberately keeping production in Australia while many competitors moved manufacturing offshore. As of 2020 the business marked 90 years of operation with three generations of the Cloros family still involved, and continues to manufacture boots -- including its K9 range and ZipSider lines -- at the Auburn factory today.
Sydney-founded Australian clothing retailer established in 1978 to bridge designer fashion and the mainstream middle market; sells tailored suiting, shirts and accessories for men and women.
Best for Australian business wear
Oxford is an Australian clothing retailer founded in 1978 in Sydney's eastern suburbs, created to sit between costly designer labels and the crowded middle market that then dominated Sydney retail. Through the 1980s it built a reputation as a more design-forward, trend-aware alternative to mainstream department-store fashion, expanding into a national omnichannel business selling tailored suiting, shirts, outerwear, footwear and accessories for both men and women. The company describes its guiding line as 'fashion is transitory but style is permanent.'
Sydney work-boot maker founded 1989 by the Cloros family, whose bootmaking trade traces to Greek immigrant brothers who began selling handmade boots at Surry Hills markets in the 1920s. Known for the classic Australian elastic-sided, pull-on work boot, still made in Sydney.
Best for Ugg work boots, Australian
Redback Boots was founded in 1989 by the Cloros family in Sydney, though the family's bootmaking roots go back further: brothers Stanley, Bill, and John Cloros left Greece for Australia in the early 1920s, bringing boot- and shoemaking skills, and began fashioning boots sold at Surry Hills markets in inner Sydney. Redback's core product is the Australian work boot: a leather boot with elastic-sided gussets and pull tabs, allowing quick on/off with a snug, laced-boot-like fit. The company still manufactures in Sydney at a time when many competitors have moved production overseas, and its boots are used by tradespeople, farmers, and military personnel in Australia and internationally.
Australian bootmaker founded 1850 in Goulburn, NSW, by William Teece and bought by Henry Baxter in 1885; known for elastic-sided riding boots used by the horse-riding community. As of 2015 reporting, about 90% of production had moved offshore to China, with a remaining factory in Goulburn.
Best for Australian leather boots
Baxter Boots was founded in Goulburn, New South Wales, in 1850 by William Teece, in a town then thriving on agriculture and wool. Henry Baxter bought the business in 1885 and built it into a major regional employer through the early-to-mid 1900s, supplying hardwearing footwear to farmers, station hands and riders; the brand's elastic-sided riding boots remain its best-known style and today it sells roughly 90,000 pairs a year. The company has stayed in the Baxter family and still runs flagship stores in Goulburn, Tamworth and Dubbo alongside a wider stockist network and wholesale division, but its manufacturing footprint has shifted substantially: as of a 2015 industry report, around 90 percent of Baxter's boots and shoes were made in China, with the remainder produced at its Goulburn factory.
Bootmaker founded in 1870 by John Blundstone in Hobart, Tasmania, originally an importer of English boots before diversifying into manufacturing in the late 1870s. The 500-series elastic-sided Chelsea boot remains its best-known style, now made in Australia and Thailand.
Best for 500 series Chelsea boots
Blundstone traces to 1870, when John Blundstone set up J. Blundstone's Boot Warehouse in Hobart, Tasmania, initially importing English boots. In the late 1870s the company diversified into its own manufacturing. In 1890 his son Sylvanus joined, and by 1891 the business had split into John Blundstone & Son (manufacturer) and W.H. Blundstone & Co. (importer). Its best-known product today is the 500 series, an elastic-sided Chelsea-style boot.
Australian safety-boot maker founded 1887 in Ballarat by bootmaker James Oliver for goldfield miners; still headquartered in Ballarat, now owned by Protective Industrial Products.
Best for Industrial safety boots
Oliver Footwear traces to 1887 in Ballarat, Victoria, where James Oliver, a British-trained bootmaker who had come to the goldfields, returned to his trade after prospecting was unsuccessful. Established as Oliver & Stevens, the business made tough boots for miners and farmers. It remained a family business for generations, most recently led by Andrew Oliver, a fourth-generation descendant of the founder. The company, still headquartered in Ballarat, became part of the KSW Group, and in November 2024 was sold from Honeywell to Protective Industrial Products, part of an Odyssey Investment Partners portfolio. Today it makes safety and work boots for mining, agriculture and industrial use across Australia and New Zealand.
Rossi began in 1910 when Arthur Rossiter left the Adelaide Boot Company to start his own operation in Kilburn, South Australia. Four generations followed, making work, station, and lifestyle boots from Australian leather and supplying the Australian Army during the Second World War.
Best for Australian heritage boots
Rossi began in 1910 when Arthur Rossiter, a former Adelaide Boot Company supervisor, resigned to start his own operation in a tin shed behind his house. By building a factory that same year, he established what would become an institution: four generations of family bootmaking in Kilburn, South Australia. During World War II, Rossi supplied hundreds of thousands of boots to the Australian Army, with production peaking at around 500 employees. The bootmaker's founding advantage was clear—Adelaide's thriving sheep and cattle industry meant access to high-grade yearling and kangaroo leather without the prohibitive costs of overseas supply. Today, Rossi continues making a diversified range including lifestyle boots (Colt, Booma, Endura, Spinifex models), work boots with slip-resistant and heat-rated soles, and certified safety boots under the IronLite range. Wide-fit and junior options extend the range.
Work-boot manufacturer founded 1995 in Bassendean, Western Australia, by five factory colleagues who set out to bring sports-shoe comfort engineering to safety footwear; boots are made in Australia and Indonesia and sold worldwide.
Best for Safety boots, comfortable
Steel Blue was founded in 1995 in Bassendean, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, by five working directors. The company's origin is traced to workers on a factory floor asking why their safety boots couldn't be as comfortable as the sports shoes they wore off-site -- a question that led the founders to apply sports-shoe comfort innovations to industrial safety footwear. The business was built on three stated principles: quality, care and excellence. From that start it grew into Australia's largest manufacturer of work and safety boots, later establishing subsidiaries in New Zealand, Europe and the United States. Production is split between factories in Australia and Indonesia, with product sold both domestically and internationally. The company marked its 25th anniversary in 2020.
The Perth family makers who've sheepskin-booted Australians since 1978 — and who fought and won the case that kept 'ugg' a generic Australian word. The real, Australian-made article.
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