Thomas Rhett's New Cowboy Boots Collab with Tecovas 'Tells a Story' Through Nostalgia and Family (Exclusive)

Creating his own collection of cowboy boots has long been on Thomas Rhett’s to-do list. This month, the country singer was able to make it happen.

The Tecovas x Thomas Rhett Collection, launched on July 20, was born out of Thomas Rhett’s love of the retailer and a simple DM to the brand that connected him with the founder, Paul Hedrick.

“I sent them a DM as a joke and said we should collab,” the country singer tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Paul got involved and was like, ‘Yes, we definitely should.’ That's where the conversation began, and from there we started talking about what my dream collaboration looked like.”

Thomas Rhett, 33, and the Tecovas team settled on a collection of six boots — three designed for men and three for women retailing for $295-$495 — and all of them are named for Thomas Rhett and his family. The collection also includes a graphic tee and two trucker hats. When he was tasked with naming his six pairs of boots, his initial idea was to name them after his family’s horses, but he tells PEOPLE that he only has two of them and didn’t want to have to make up another four names for his collection.

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“My brain sort of went down this crazy spiral,” he says. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I have a ton of family members. Why don't I pick my six favorites?’ No, I'm just kidding, but that’s how the family idea came to be.” 

While he says he didn’t necessarily pick his favorite family members, he did name his boots after family members that allowed him to tap into his memories to create a boot for each person.

“The collection tells a story,” the musician says while describing the boots. “For me and my dad [singer/songwriter Rhett Akins] — I'll never forget — my dad always used to wear ostrich ropers growing up, and even when I was too small to fit into them, I would go into his closet and wear his boots around the house. So, those ostrich ropers just feel nostalgic for me and my dad.” 

Another boot that is particularly special to Thomas Rhett is the Lauren, named after his wife of 10 years, Lauren Akins. He says he was especially proud of making a boot for her that she would genuinely love wearing in her day-to-day life — and she’s been doing exactly that. 

“My wife goes and rides horses three days a week, and she’s been wearing the Lauren, which is her definition of a roper boot and one that she can wear to stomp through the mud and put in some stirrups to get going on a horse,” Thomas Rhett says. “That’s where the design came from — she’s always ridden horses, but this year she’s ramped it up and gotten into barreling and roping, so getting to design a boot that my wife actually wants to wear has been really, really cool.”

It was important to the "Angels" singer to not just stamp his name on the boot — don’t worry, he did that — but to also be involved in the entire process. He did everything from naming the boots to selecting which materials would be used on each one. He even had the power to decide what the silhouette would be for each. As the first celebrity partner for the brand, he set the precedent for how such a collaboration would come together. 

“No, I did not cut any leather or attach any soles to the boots,” he says with a laugh, adding, “But I was extremely involved in the design process and figuring it all out. How tan did I want it compared to how orange. Picking colors and sole heights and where to put the logo, all of that stuff. It was a hands-on process and a lot of design meetings.”

And putting on the boots with his name emblazoned on the bottom was a bit of a surreal moment for the ACM Award winner. 

“It’s very weird,” he says. “Every time I get to slip on the ones with my signature on the bottom, it feels like it’s frickin’ go time. I’ve wanted to do this for such a long time and now that I’ve got a boot that connects to me and to my family, it makes it so much more authentic.”

And Thomas Rhett’s Tecovas collab truly did make sense — he tells PEOPLE that he actually was a bit of a fanboy of the brand before diving into this collection. He says he had at least nine or 10 pairs of Tecovas that he’d been amassing over the past couple years, because he just admires the vibe and quality of the brand. 

“I’m a creature of habit, so a lot of my collection looks pretty similar, but you can never have too many boots,” the artist says. 

It was also not taxing in the slightest to do his day-long campaign shoot. His wife, some friends and their horses joined him for an “easy” day of creating what he calls “organic content” about the boots. 

“Tecovas was super easy to collaborate with and very on board with all of my ideas of what I wanted to do and hopefully there's another one coming in the future,” Thomas Rhett says. In the spirit of naming boots after his loved ones, maybe the next collection could be for his four daughters. When posed with the suggestion, he teases that the “sky's the limit.”

Shop Thomas Rhett’s Tecovas collection here.