Celebrated shoe designer Stuart Weitzman was among the VIPs at Friday’s party marking the completion of the Essex Street Gateway Mural in Haverhill. (Massachusetts Cultural Council executive director Anita Walker was the keynote speaker.) The four-story, 3,000-square-foot painting titled “Hues of the Heart” was done by artists Meg Saligman and James Tafel Shuster of MLS Studios in Philadelphia. From start to finish, the mural portraying the history of Haverhill took 18 months to complete. Weitzman’s father, Seymour, opened a shoe factory in Haverhill in the late 1950s, and Weitzman began designing shoes for his father in the early ’60s.