His name has become synonymous with women’s luxury shoes, yet Manolo Blahnik is a shoe designer by accident. He was studying art and set design in Paris when, in 1969, his friend Paloma Picasso introduced him to director of the Met Costume Institute, Diana Vreeland. Upon seeing Manolo’s sketches for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Vreeland zeroed in on Hippolyta’s high-heeled sandal decorated with ivy and cherries and told him, “Young man, stick to the extremities and make shoes!”
Born in the Canary Islands to a Spanish mother and a Czech father, Manolo grew up in the lush and isolated setting of a banana plantation owned by his mother’s family. He recalls having an early fixation with feet-specifically those of the lizards that invaded the gardens of his home. In a solitary game, Manolo would shape the aluminium wrappers from his chocolate candies into shoes for the unsuspecting reptiles. It wasn’t until his conversation with Diana Vreeland many years later that he would think about creating shoes again.
Manolo studied shoemaking informally, by visiting the best Italian shoe factories and interrogating the artisans about their craft. Settling in London in 1969, he pursued his passion for design and in 1971 he developed his inaugural shoe for a runway show of the most prominent British fashion designer of the time, Ossie Clark. Shortly afterwards, he opened his first boutique on Old Church Street, in Chelsea. In those early days, Manolo never left his shop. His magnetic personality created an atmosphere of beauty and fascination for customers and friends such as Bianca Jagger, Rupert Everett, David Hockney and Anna Wintour.
He found the bulky platforms and wedges of the ‘70s boorish and inelegant, so he designed sleek stiletto heels and persuaded his female customers to adopt his vision of femininity.
From the iconic blue Hangisi pumps with jewelled buckles worn by fictional bride Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, to the time she was robbed of her favourite sample sale strappy sandals at gunpoint, Manolo Blahnik is as famed for his illustrations as his impossibly delicate designs. And with the booming popularity of kitten heels, celebs like Meghan Markle, Hailey Bieber, and Jennifer Lawrence regularly don their Manolos.
In a career spanning over four decades, Manolo has remained creative, original and true to his treasured aesthetic. In 2015, he published Fleeting Gestures and Obsessions, a transcript of conversations with fellow icons such as Pedro Almodóvar and Sofia Coppola about his treasured influences in art, design and literature, alongside select photos from his archive of over 30,000 designs. You can watch the story of his life, Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards.
Today, Manolo works at the same dynamic pace he always has. If he isn’t drawing designs at his office in Marylebone or at his home in Bath, Manolo can be found in the factories in Italy, developing samples by hand, dressed in his characteristic white lab coat with a silk handkerchief tucked in the breast pocket- spirited and meticulous in all that he does and all that he is.
