A STEP IN TIME
Manolo Blahnik’s masterpieces go on display amid the treasures of the Wallace Collection
Behind his tiny tortoiseshell spectacles, Manolo Blahnik’s already owl-like eyes are growing increasingly wide. ‘Give it to me!’ exclaims the fabled shoe designer. ‘Oh! I haven’t seen that for years. I look better than I do now… though I can at least laugh about that.’ He is inspecting a photograph of himself from a 2006 shoot for Bazaar, in which, wearing a signature Anderson & Sheppard suit, he leans louchely against a mantelpiece in the Wallace Collection.
Blahnik was 19 when he first visited the townhouse-turnedmuseum – home to the exquisite furniture and art collection of Sir Richard Wallace and Lady Wallace after she bequeathed it to the nation in 1897. It became his favourite haunt when he moved to London to set up his shoe business in the 1970s, and its riches have inspired him ever since: he has visited annually for the past 55 years. This summer, however, he will be stopping by rather more often, following the opening of an innovative exhibition in which shoes and sketches from the Blahnik archive will be the first ‘foreign objects’
to go on display throughout the Georgian mansion, dotted among the treasures. We can expect sequined boots on the staircase, stilettos in the study and feathered mules in the Drawing Room.
Blahnik is charmingly uneasy about the idea of seeing his slingbacks in among the Titians, Rembrandts and priceless Rococo commodes: ‘I’m really scared. An exhibition! How pretentious! I’m not an exhibitionist really.’ But Xavier Bray, the dynamic director of the Wallace Collection, is unequivocally thrilled about the project, having joined from Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2006 with the mission of bringing a cross-disciplinary energy to this hidden gem of a cultural institution. It was his daring idea to defy Lady Wallace’s will, which decreed that nothing was ever to be taken away from, or mixed in with, the precious objects within the house’s original rooms. Were the trustees shocked by such a proposal? ‘Once I explained how the collaboration is a way to bring new visitors through the doors to see the Wallace through Manolo’s eyes, they were keen,’ he says. ‘My feeling is that, so long as it’s cerebral and artistic, I’m up for it.’ As he points out, the collection belongs to the British public, so it is his job to encourage as many people as possible to come and enjoy it.
The exhibits have been curated to resonate with the art and decor in each room,
and reflect some of Blahnik’s many enthusiasms. Jester-inspired boots and sandals sporting pompoms echo the playfully theatrical ‘fête galante’ portrayals of court parties by 18th-century painters in the Small Drawing Room. In the Boudoir Cabinet, bejewelled slippers blend in with the diamond-mounted snuff boxes. Elsewhere, in a celebration of Gallic passion, the embroidered courts made for the protagonists of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette join Boucher’s portrait of Madame de Pompadour and the airborne heroine of Fragonard’s painting The Swing, who happens to be kicking off her own delicate pink pump as she flies through the trees.
A tribute to Blahnik’s love for Britain and British materials in the West Room, in which tartan boots are juxtaposed with masterpieces by Gainsborough, Reynolds and Landseer, is especially dazzling – and deeply personal. At different points in our conversation, Blahnik talks of his affection for Charles Dickens, moorland, Notting Hill, tea, Celia Birtwell, Sir John Soane’s Museum, David Bowie, Suffolkspun silk, the National Theatre, Victorian gas street lamps (‘much-missed’), Cecil Beaton (‘divine’) and Hebridean tweed (‘unrivalled’). He also adores Mary Beard and thinks that a large statue of her should be put up in her honour at the government’s earliest convenience.
With an honorary CBE, a devoted following that ranges from Victoria Beckham to the Duchess of Sussex, and now a groundbreaking installation in a London landmark, surely Blahnik is as deserving as Beard of the ‘national treasure’ mantle? I suspect he will not hear of it. Despite his status as a fashion-industry legend and now the star of the Wallace Collection’s summer show, this is a designer who, in characteristically self-deprecating style, still refers to himself as ‘a shoe boy’. ‘An Enquiring Mind: Manolo Blahnik at the Wallace Collection’ (www.wallacecollection. org) runs from 10 June to 1 September.