‘Visually, I find flats horrendous’
Manolo Blahnik is celebrating 50 years in fashion, and he’s as outspoken as ever, finds Bethan Holt
H‘The Princess of Wales was divine, she would be in her 60s now and I miss her’
is shoes, loved by everyone from royalty and politicians to reality TV stars, might be affectionately known as “Manolos” but there’s really only one way to address the genius behind those creations: Mr Blahnik. It’s the title used by everyone who works with him and which encapsulates the old school charm, eccentric creativity and romance which he embodies like no other living designer.
At 78, and marking 50 years in the business of making beautiful shoes, Mr Blahnik is as utterly himself as ever, untouched by boring modern niceties of PR tickboxing. For example, despite creating some of the most of-the-moment footwear of the past half century, he recoils at the idea of kowtowing to trends.
“Sometimes I see shoes which are so hideous, I wonder if maybe I’m out of sync,” he tells me from his home on the Spanish island of La Palma, where he’s surrounded by several of his 17 labradors. “I think, ‘I’ve seen these shoes four times already in my career’,” he continues, “and I’ve never been tempted to do such a thing or to be fashionable.”
That’s why you’ll rarely find him designing flats and never trainers. “If that’s what people want, OK, fine,” he sighs, “but visually I find them horrendous. I like the end of the body to be light and beautifully dressed, not with these heavy things.”
Mr Blahnik, whose business is still privately owned, is also not one to effusively praise the celebrity du jour, despite the fact that their feet will likely be shod in his Manolos. “I don’t know the names of all those girls. I don’t notice new girls now,” he says dismissively. He has no time for “all those girls who waste time as influencers, it’s kind of horrid. Maybe this pandemic is going to change that?” he asks, hopefully.
Instead, the world of Mr Blahnik is a rarefied haven where Netflix and Zoom are out and memories of the “spontaneous” 1970s when he was just starting out and the sophisticated women he met along the way are in. Born in La Palma in 1942, Mr Blahnik attended boarding school in Switzerland, then initially studied politics and law at university, but soon followed the siren call of creativity, moving first to Paris and then London, becoming increasingly immersed in fashion. “It was Mrs Vreeland who really started it all, she told me that I had an incredible amount of talent,” he recalls of meeting the legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland who encouraged him to begin his own business, which he did in 1971. “It took me years to learn my trade,” he says. “It was very casual at the beginning, I didn’t have a clue. People used to stay all afternoon just talking in my little shop.” And by people, he means the likes of Bianca Jagger and Grace Coddington, arguably the influencers of their time, though probably with more focus on adventure than algorithms – Jagger was wearing Manolos when she rode into Studio 54 on a horse.
Soon, the Manolo look went global and he became a star in America (this was long before Sex and the City, the show which has made him a household name today, was even a twinkle in HBO’S eye), where people would queue for hours at a time to meet him. In Atlanta, he recalls a woman who asked him to sign her leg, coming back hours later to proudly show off her freshly inked tattoo of his autograph.
Today, the Duchesses of Sussex and Cambridge both have considerable collections of sleek Manolo Blahnik BB pumps in their wardrobes, but it is their late mother-in-law, who wore Manolos throughout her life in the public eye, but perhaps most famously on the evening that she debuted her “revenge dress” in 1994, whom Mr Blahnik particularly admires. “The Princess of Wales was divine, she would be in her 60s now and I miss her tremendously. We could still have a beautiful Princess,” he says wistfully.
He’s equally admiring of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. “She married Mrs Onassis’s son and then they both died in a plane. She was beautiful, so elegant. She could be the daughter of Carolina Herrera. She had these white shirts from the Gap which she wore with long skirts.”
Rather than being obsessed with the latest bright young thing, Mr Blahnik reserves his praise for, “ladies of a certain age, they’re my favourites. The new girls are never going to compare with those old ones”. Anna Wintour, 72, a long-time Manolo devotee, might be pleased to hear that. “I adooooore Amanda Harlech, she’s the last bastion of style,” Mr Blahnik coos. “I love English people like that, they have this incredible madness and they know how to dress beautifully.”
Mr Blahnik’s most famous design is arguably the Hangisi, the crystal-embellished satin high heel creation which was immortalised in the first Sex and the City film, when Mr Big proposes to Carrie with a pair in lieu of an engagement ring. The show has made his designs into cult classics for a modern generation of shoe lovers. Sarah Jessicia Parker has even been pictured wearing the Hangisis on the set of the reboot, And Just Like That..., but Mr Blahnik prefers to focus on lesser known styles.
“When I was young I was very much in love with a shoe I did for Ossie Clark which was green with ivy and cherries going up the leg,” he explains. “I loved that shoe so much because it was fun and it typified the times. In later years, I made a shoe called Tortura, which I loved because it was the last shoe I could make with Sicilian coral, after that it was forbidden to collect the coral because it was disappearing.”
To celebrate his 50th anniversary, there will be no big glitzy party full of women in glimmering Manolos – “A celebration with this pandemic going on? That wouldn’t be responsible,” he exclaims – but for anyone who is preparing for party season, there’s a fabulous new collection of entirely gold shoes being released tomorrow (Mr Blahnik loves the Rayuelas, even though they’re flats) and next week a virtual experience, Manolo Blahnik: A New Way of Walking, will launch, taking us into his world through archive “rooms” full of sketches, clips and photographs.
“It’s very well done,” says Mr Blahnik of the project, overseen by fashion curator Judith Clark.
Not that this milestone should be seen as a sign that Mr Blahnik is to take things slowly. “I’ve never been working so much in my life,” he exclaims. “I’ve been doing thousands of shoes. God knows if they’re gonna sell.” Something tells me they might.