shoes addiction

Manolo Blahnik works alone.  He personally and single-handedly sketches his models, carves the molds out of wood and sculpts the heels.  He surveys the production and sketches the illustrations for his ad campaigns.  And he accomplishes all this, and has for the last almost 40 years, without any formal training. “I didn’t need it,” he said, half-jokingly in the late 1970s, “because I’ve got the best taste in the world.”  Jokingly or not, it seems that Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and even Anna Wintour would agree with him.

 

Blahnik was born in 1942 in Santa Cruz de la Palma in the Canary Islands to a Czech father and a Spanish mother. He grew up on a banana plantation owned by his father and often traveled with his family to Madrid and Paris where his mother would purchase clothes from designers like Balenciaga.  She subscribed to fashion magazines like Vogue U.S. and Glamour, and also convinced the local shoemaker to teach her how to make Catalan espadrilles, which Blahnik loved to watch her do. “I’m sure I acquired my interest in shoes genetically or at least through my fingers, when I was allowed to touch them as they were made,” he later said.

Blahnik’s parents hoped that he would become a diplomat and he enrolled at the University of Geneva to study law and politics.  His interests lay elsewhere, however, and he soon changed to literature and architecture.  He left Geneva for Paris in 1965 where he studied art at L’École des Beaux-Arts and L’École du Louvre and worked in a vintage clothing store in the Saint Germain des Près neighborhood to make extra money.  Under his father’s influence, he moved to London to attend a language school but spent most of his time in the cinemas.

 

Blahnik finally decided that he would like to become a theater set designer and prepared a portfolio to present in New York in 1971.  His friend, Paloma Picasso, introduced him to Diana Vreeland who was then the editor of Vogue U.S.  Her reaction? “How amusing. Amusing. You can do accessories very well. Why don’t you do that? Go make shoes. Your shoes in these drawings are so amusing.”

He returned to London where he visited shoe factories to watch and learn.  He worked for a boutique called Zapata and began designing men’s’ shoes for them – colorful version of the vintage models he had seen in the movies — but soon became frustrated with the limitations imposed on them.  Then, in 1972, he was asked to design the shoes for Ossie Clark’s collection.  Aesthetically, they were a success – one pair had cherries that wrapped the ankle and an ultra high heel.   However, they were also impractical: “I forgot to put in heels that would support the shoe, when it got hot the heels started to wobble – it was like walking on quicksand,” he recalled. Vogue U.K. warned, “If you’re buying (his) shoes, employ a sense of humour.”

 

His models for Zapata were now sought out by Vogue editors and actresses, e.g., Charlotte Rampling, Jane Birkin, Marisa Berenson, and even Hollywood’s Lauren Bacall.  He found a manufacturer who corrected his technical problems and little by little learned the craft of making shoes: “It took many years to realize how to do shoes how to make them lovely and arty and technically perfect.” Women’s Wear Daily described him as “one of the most exotic spirits in London” whose “shoes… were, if not wearable, then certainly newsworthy”.

In 1974, he was the first man to grace the cover of Vogue U.K., photographed by David Bailey with Angelica Huston.

 

Blahnik bought out Zapata in 1973.  Bianca Jagger came in and fell in love immediately with his shoes.  In 1977, she entered the infamous Studio 54 riding a white horse with “Manolo’s” on her feet.  In 1978, he created a collection for Bloomingdales and in 1978 opened his own boutique in NYC.

Blahnik’s collections consisted of avant-garde models supported by other models that were “good solid looks that will wear forever.”  He took his inspirations from diverse sources, e.g., films by Cocteau and Visconti, paintings by El Greco and Velázquez, as well as designers including Yves Saint Laurent, Coco Chanel, and, like his mother, Cristobál Balenciaga.

Blahnik continued to master shoe making techniques by working with and studying the best factories.  He collaborated often with clothing designers, especially with Calvin Klein, but also with younger designers, e.g., John Galliano and Isaac Mizrahi.

The Process

Colin McDowell, the fashion historian, observed Blahnik at work in the 1990s, 30 years into his career.  Blahnik begins by sketching with a Tombo Japanese brush pen either at home, in his London studios, or in his Italian factories.  McDowell described “firm, assured hand movements followed by precise, sharp little jabs as the details are fitted in” and the shoe was drawn in 3 minutes.  The next step usually takes up to one day and involves carving the last (the solid form around which the shoe is molded), often using beechwood, and sculpting the heel, which is formed first by a machine then worked by hand with a chisel and file.  All of this is done by Blahnik himself.  When he has a satisfactory result, molds are created out of aluminum and plastic from which the shoes will be made.

 

“I have the advantage of study,” he told McDowell. “I’ve been studying the art of the shoe… for over twenty years. I know every process. I know how to cut and cut away here (the side of the shoe) and still make it so that it stays on the foot. And the secret of toe cleavage, a very important part of the sexuality of the shoe. You must only show the first two cracks. And the heel. Even if it’s twelve centimeters high it still has to feel secure – and that’s a question of balance. That’s why I carve each heel personally myself – on the machine and then by hand with a chisel and file, until it’s exactly right.”  “Shoes help transform a woman.”

Recognition

“Please sir,” she pleaded. “You can take my Fendi baguette, you can take my ring and my watch, but don’t take my Manolo Blahniks.”  Thus spoke Carrie Bradshaw, Sarah Jessica Parker’s character in Sex and the City to her attacker. From that moment on, the term for exquisite, bank-breaking shoes was “Manolo.”  Blahnik ended up designing a model named after Parker.

 

It is the Manolo aesthetic that women seem to love.  His shoes have the power to make women feel taller, sexier, and more beautiful.  He reinvented the high heel, giving it new shapes, using unusual materials and colors, and lavishing it with details out of pearls, ribbons, straps, feathers, and sequins, among others.

The CFDA honored him in 1987, 1990, 1998; the British Fashion Council in 1990, 1999, and 2003.  In 2001, the King of Spain, Don Juan Carlos I, awarded him with La Medalla de Oro en merito en las Bellas Artes.  In 2003, London’s Design Museum held a major exhibition of his work and collections of his sketches were published.  In 2005, Blahnik by Boman, a photo collection of Blahnik’s shoes was published by his friend, Eric Boman, with an introduction by Paloma Picasso.  Later the same year, he was asked to design the shoes for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette that received an Academy Award for Best Costume.