The Stetson & Sporran, Aberfeldy (1994 – 2026)
Highland Perthshire's only Western-and-Highland outfitter has closed, just as its moment finally arrived.
A Western-wear shop window, of the kind Aberfeldy will now miss very much. Photo: RandomKatze, “White cowboy hat from Calgary”, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
The Stetson & Sporran, which sold cowboy boots, kilts, bolo ties and tartan bandanas from a small shop just off the Square, has closed after 32 years, a fortnight before Aberfeldy’s Texas twinning made it the most relevant shop in Scotland.
It opened in 1994, when its founder came back from a holiday in Nashville with a dream, a van full of belt buckles and no business plan. For 32 years, it sold an average of two Stetsons a year, both of them to the same man, who kept losing them on the Birks.
Its finest hour came in 2003, when a coach party from Ohio stopped in Aberfeldy by mistake, came in to ask directions and left with 14 sporrans. It never recovered from the excitement.
The shop is remembered for its legendary window display, which showed a mannequin in a kilt, cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat, sitting on a hay bale beside a stuffed Highland cow called Dolly. Tourists photographed it. Locals walked past it quickly.
Its owner closed the shop last month to retire to Kenmore. When told about the twinning, he is said to have sat very still for a long time and then said, quietly, “Typical.”
The Stetson & Sporran is survived by one pair of size-12 cowboy boots, which nobody has ever been able to get on, and by Dolly, who now lives in a garage in Weem and frightens the cat.
The real story: Aberfeldy twinning (The Courier)
Letters to the Editor
The views expressed are those of the reader, and frankly that's on them.
-
Bought my wedding boots there. Cowboy boots with a kilt. My mother hasn’t spoken about it since. 1999.
— Wendy F., Aberfeldy, 2 November 2026 -
Thirty years too early. Typical Aberfeldy.
— Neil D., Kenmore, 2 November 2026
Write to the Editor