»Shoes are my gold medals« | Jewish General

Pop diva Beyoncé has "already danced a thousand miles in his beautiful shoes", First Lady Jill Biden asked her compatriots to vote with the word "Vote" on his boots - and stars like Duchess Meghan or tennis pro Serena Williams show up again and again in shoes by Stuart Weitzman. The American-Jewish designer, who turns 80 today, has mastered his career spanning decades and has become the favorite foot decorator of many stars.

Shoes are by no means "silly accessories," Weitzman once said at a ceremony at the New York Historical Society. "There are shoes that enter the room before a woman and only leave after her - they can create such a big impression." For him, shoes are his "gold medals".

PASSION Passion seems to be innate: Weitzman's father owned a shoe factory in the US state of Massachusetts, and his two sons took over the company. However, Stuart Weitzman first studied economics and considered going to Wall Street - but even then he kept drawing shoe designs. “I then said to my brother that I would like to try being a designer for a year. Maybe I would like it.'

Weitzman called his first pair of high heels "Eve". "I've always taken a lot of trouble with the names of my shoes, because - I don't want to say they're like my children, but yes: the shoes are like my children." The probationary period led to a career spanning decades in which Weitzman eventually became chief designer and managing director of the company that was later named after him.

The combination of economic knowledge and design talent led to success: Weitzman decided against men's shoes because of the significantly lower demand and bought his factories in order to be able to produce more cheaply and implement trends more quickly. He padded his high heels to make them more comfortable.

Weitzman also used clever marketing tricks. For example, in 2002 he let the actress Laura Harring walk down the red carpet at the Oscars in so-called "million-dollar shoes" - and suddenly everyone was only talking about the diamond-studded shoes. At least since then, Weitzman models have been playing in the same league as those by star designers such as Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin and Sergio Rossi - but are usually significantly cheaper.

STAMPS Weitzman used the money he earned to fulfill the craziest dreams of his childhood passion for collecting. »Back then I started filling albums with everything I could find. I had an album for world-famous international stamps and at the top of the page there was a big empty space for British Guiana," the designer once told the New York Times - shortly after selling that stamp for a record price of 9.5 million had bought dollars. »She took me back to my childhood.«

Recently, Weitzman re-auctioned the British Guiana and other rare stamps and coins. "All my life I've had the dream of collecting the greatest rarities in the two great collectors' worlds of stamps and coins and then making these extraordinary treasures, which have been hidden for decades, available to the public for viewing. That's what I wanted to do and that's what I did. That was my dream. Today my dream is to leave something for a good cause and I will use the proceeds from these sales to do so.«

The designer has kept his collection of historical shoes, which began with a birthday present from his wife and has also been on display in an exhibition at the New York Historical Society. "Shoes do so much more than cover feet," Weitzman said at the opening of the exhibition. »Shoes tell stories.«

RETIREMENT Weitzman, who has two daughters with his wife Jane, has now sold his company and is slowly withdrawing from everyday design work. “I've worked 16 hours a day, 350 days a year for the past 40 years. When I started thinking about retirement, I asked myself how I could fill the day. Then I started making a list of things I would like to do.« Among other things, it says table tennis tournaments, founding museums and producing musicals.

But Weitzman will probably never get away from the design either. »Designing a product and then seeing how women love it - that's what brought me into the game. Right from the start I found it incredible that I could do something she wanted. And that hasn't changed since then.«