Aquazzura Founder Edgardo Osorio Debuts a Summery Shoe Line at Saks

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Designer Edgardo Osorio, founder of high-end shoe label Aquazzura, made a personal appearance last week at the Saks Fifth Avenue in the Prudential Center to launch his spring/summer collection. With graceful silhouettes and fun, eye-catching details, the collection is an ode to global travel—inspired by his trips to Colombia, Mexico, Greece, and Turkey.

“It started with a picture of a client of mine on Instagram who had placed all her sandals and jewelry on top of a suitcase,” he says. “It’s taking elements of the jewelry of the Navajo mixed with the prints and ceramics of Greece and the pompoms of Mexico. I was looking for happy, joyful shoes. Something that makes you want to go on holiday and to have a cocktail.”

With everything from flats with draped and beaded embellishments to cobalt blue stilettos, the new collection definitely has us dreaming of warmer and more festive climes. His reliance on tassels, fringe, feathers, and jovial criss-cross laces are welcome update to the standard pump. The good news is: with eight new retail locations cropping up this year, a children’s line in the works, and a new collaboration slated for release this fall, Osorio shows absolutely no signs of stopping.

And these punchy designs boast more than just style. For Osorio, who got his start at 19 working with brands like Ferragamo and Roberto Cavalli, forging a sexy shoe doesn’t always mean you have to forsake comfort. “When I started out, the idea of comfort in shoes was almost a dirty word,” he says. “I was the first one to say that there could be comfortable sexy shoes and it’s a big part of our brand. We make beautiful shoes but we make comfortable beautiful shoes.”

When it comes to designing footwear, Osorio caters to the “Aquazzura woman,” he says. “Ninety-five percent of my office is women. I’ve always been surrounded by women. For some reason, many designers are in fashion but they don’t love women. I love women and I follow my clients on Instagram. I want you to be able to go to Aquazzura and find a shoe for every occasion, whether that’s a red carpet ball or picking up your kids from school.”

Osorio is the perfect designer to add to your wardrobe this spring—that is, of course—if you don’t already own a pair of his signature “Sexy Thing” sandals (Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadad certainly do). The suede kicks feature keyhole cutouts, luxe leather lining, and black tie lacing. This, Osorio says, is the “it” shoe that really put Aquazzura on the map.

“It’s a very different kind of shoe and became a new typology of shoes to have,” Osorio said. “It’s not a sandal, but it’s not a bootie. It’s a very transitional shoe. Kendall wore it with jeans and a T-shirt and Gigi wore it with a Tom Ford dress. You can walk in it all day. That shoe really changed my business because that was the shoe that everyone went crazy for. It was because of ‘Sexy Thing’ that we became well-known.”