These Boots Were Made for Walking – An Interview with Stuart Weitzman

During designer-entrepreneur Stuart Weitzman’s 2026 university tour, we — Elizabeth Comer and Savannah Matthews — had the privilege of speaking with him one-on-one to get the inside scoop on his time in the fashion industry. Weitzman, 84, was born with shoe design in his blood. He began designing for his father’s factory in the 1960s, eventually forming his own business, Stuart Weitzman, and becoming a leading designer of celebrity shoes, including for Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. 

ELIZABETH COMER: In previous interviews, you’ve mentioned that design was your hobby. You could have applied this creativity to many forms, such as clothes or art, so why did you stick with the shoe, and what does the shoe allow you to express that clothing doesn’t?

STUART WEITZMAN: It was an accident … And I had fun doing it … And I was paid for 20 sketches … It’s like, wow, this is not just fun. You can make some money in this game. And I had gone to Wharton, but generally most people [go to Wharton] for Wall Street and banking and those kinds of industries … It was an exciting offer I was given, and it worked out, and that’s how I ended up here.

SAVANNAH MATTHEWS: What makes Stuart Weitzman shoes so unique?

SW: You have to have somebody at your side … Barbara [Kreger] made them unique in the fit aspect of it … It has to be … modern, contemporary. Whoever my market is — whether it’s the lawyer or the fashionista — it has to feel good. 

[Barbara] wouldn’t let a poor-fitting shoe go to the marketplace, no matter how beautiful it was, and that’s good business. Since I had gone to a business school, I recognized that. Then the design side had to take second place in that kind of decision. It is the comfort and the fit, and the industry made it so easy … because a man always bought shoes with comfort. We didn’t think of anything else. If it didn’t feel good, it came right off the foot. But women were suffering … That’s what made it unique.

EC: What makes a shoe or design successful to you? Is it performance, comfort? Is there storytelling involved? Is it something else?

SW: Shoes do tell a story … the history of how women were thought of, in a sense, treated, in dominant male America. And that’s what the world was like. I can’t give you a better example than this: left feet and right feet. They’re different. Men had left lasts and right lasts 75 years before anyone made one for women … The shoe really tells you the liberation of women.

EC: Having been a designer for so many years, how do you avoid repeating yourself creatively? 

SW: [My collections are] 75 percent evolutionary and 25 percent only revolutionary. So you have to repeat yourself. You want a commercial business, you have to repeat yourself. You want to maintain a customer base that likes your styling, you have to repeat yourself. You just have to make it not just different, but contemporary for the moment … So repetition … I think it’s one of the most important things in anything you do or make. How do you get an iconic item if you don’t repeat, right? 

SM: As a fashion and arts magazine, we’re constantly exploring the relationship between different art forms and culture. What role do shoes play in art, art history and pop culture?

SW: Footwear … became a pop culture item.

It became that …There’s a famous actress named Mae West … She was big noise and got a lot of press, and she was asked, “Why do you always dress so outrageously?” … “I’d rather be looked over than overlooked.” There’s a population that feels that way, and that helps this pop culture thing and exaggeration, and we play into what’s going on. 

I look at clothing design. I look at architectural design. What movie has great wardrobes that’s going to influence fashion? So if we’re paying attention to that, we’re part of it, and we even start some of it with these kinds of exaggerated shoes. 

SM: What do you hope to leave as your legacy as a designer and entrepreneur?

SW: Cool-looking, beautiful shoes that you could wear. And remember, I designed the Nudist. My two kids vetoed this, but I said I wanna carve the Nudist on my tombstone … When I first made that shoe and there’s a reason I made it … The lead critic at Variety wrote “We have seen something new on the red carpet this year. I believe Stuart Weitzman’s Nudist will change the red carpet,” and he ended it with the word “forever.”