Acclaimed shoe designer Stuart Weitzman recently slipped into Neiman Marcus NorthPark to mingle with Dallas area customers and gain ideas for upcoming collections.
 

“I want to meet the women who buy our shoes,” Weitzman said. “I stop them on the street, I tap them on the shoulder at parties and I say ‘Gee, I hope you love those shoes.’ It could be a shoe on a five-inch heel or a flat and I get the same answer – they’re comfortable.”
 

The designer, known for his stylish yet surprisingly comfortable shoes, takes pride in his collections that feature something for everyone at every age. The collection goes from show-stopping stilettos to basic ballet flats, and then to what Weitzman calls the ‘must-have’ boot of the season – a flat over-the-knee boot.
 

“The flat boot is a great success,” Weitzman said. “The best selling flat boot covers the knee-cap, so you can wear it with jeans tucked inside or you can wear it with a regular length skirt.”
 

If you want to crank it up a notch from the slightly over-the-knee style, Weitzman recommends the thigh-high boots in his collection.
 

“The thigh-high might make you think of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman,” Weitzman said.

“But it’s evolved from the street corner to main stream fashion and, worn properly, it looks fabulous.”
 

However, Weitzman warns that the thigh-high boot is not for the fashion cautious and he said if you’re going to rock the dramatic look you have to flawlessly style the rest of your look.
 

“If you don’t know how to wear it, you can look trashy,” Weitzman said. “So you have to be careful, you have to know how to put it together, and if you do it right there is nothing more exciting than wearing a boot like that with the right outfit.”
         
Besides offering a variety of styles appealing to any age group, Weitzman’s key selling point is comfort.
 

“Every shoe I design, from a flat, to a platform sandal or to a high-heeled pump, has to feel good or it is out of the line,” Weitzman said. “We don’t want girls running around in sneakers, but I want to make sharp looking shoes that are as comfortable as sneakers.”
 

Weitzman is constantly surrounded by estrogen—whether it’s his customers’, his wife and two daughters’, or his 23 women-only design team’s. But the designer admits he would not have it any other way.
 

“It is quite amazing if you think about the hundreds of different types of shoes that have been created over the years, that continue to be re-worked in modern ways for the woman,” Weitzman said. “It is basically the reason I have never made men’s shoes: because men won’t wear red patent leather and are certainly not going to wear thigh-high boots.”
 

Weitzman grew up in the shoe business. His father owned the local shoe store in his hometown of Haverhill, Mass.. But designing shoes was just a hobby for Weitzman, who left the shoe business to attend the prestigious Wharton School of Business.
 

“I thought I would break the bank on Wall Street,” Weitzman said. “But I got the bug called fashion.”
 

At that time, Weitzman was the only Wharton graduate to pursue a career in the fashion and design industry.
 

“Designers usually come from F.I.T. or Pratt,” Weitzman said. “Drawing, painting and sketching were always my hobby, but I wasn’t going to be a professional artist because business was going to be my career.”
 

Somehow, Weitzman managed to accomplish the dream so many college students posses. He made a successful career out of his passion and hobby.
 

“My message to everyone is whatever you do, work at something you love,” Weitzman said. “Even if it means less money, that’s the job you have to go after. I have never felt that I have gone to work. I always felt like I was going out to have a good time.”