‘Mama always says there’s an awful lot you can tell about a person by they shoes. Where they going, where they been.’
Forrest Gump said it on a park bench. Stuart Weitzman lived it for more than five decades in the designer footwear industry. As former CEO and Creative Director of the Stuart Weitzman brand, the fashion mogul referred to his designs as “his children… like a part of his DNA.”
Weitzman’s vibrant perspective translated into the intergenerational audience of fashion enthusiasts, undergraduates and alumni alike, who gathered at the Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall for the speaker event coordinated by Visions and Voices on November 1.
Although Stuart Weitzman the brand now belongs to Tapestry — formerly known as Coach, and now a parent company to Stuart Weitzman, Kate Spade New York and Coach New York — Stuart Weitzman the man still very much has his heart and soul (and sole) in shoemaking at 82 years old.
Promptly at 5:00 p.m., Weitzman took the podium at the center of the room, making shoe contact before eye contact with those in the front row. He sported a salmon-toned button down, white ankle-length trousers and contrary to his iconic high-heeled designs, a pair of gray and white On Cloud tennis shoes.
“I think there are more people here than at Trump’s inauguration,” Weitzman said.
The tension of meeting an idol seemed to dissipate from the room, and the eager crowd shared laughter with Weitzman like old friends. Immediately, he delved into the first of his truisms — dubbed ‘Stu-isms’ by his employees — gesturing to a four-letter word on the screen to his left, written in a font as bold and black as his signature glasses frames.
RISK.
“If you think as an artist or a creator, [risk] is your best friend,” Weitzman said. “You measure them, but you take them.”
As a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business alumni, Weitzman became acquainted with the idea of risk early on in his career. He often asked…
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