Is Manolo Blahnik the antidote to the fashion shoe designer? The past few years have shed a whole lot of light on the enduring appeal of Blahnik’s shapes. Where the peep-toes and platforms sent forth by his peers can feel a tad démodé, quieter silhouettes like his square-toed mules are enjoying new life among street style types and tenor-setting stars like the Olsens. This week that legacy, spanning more than four decades, will be honored when Blahnik receives the Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion at Lincoln Center. Blahnik’s life and work is also the subject of a lush new book from Rizzoli, Manolo Blahnik: Fleeting Gestures and Obsessions. Ahead of a weeklong decampment from his beloved London to New York, we caught up with the man himself to talk copycats, the 21st-century information overload, and the pair of cinematic shoes he cannot bear.
What does receiving the Couture Council Award mean to you?
I’m absolutely terrified [to accept it], actually, but I had to do it because it’s the greatest honor that one in my profession will get. After 40 years, I don’t get used to things like that, I’m sorry. I cannot, that’s the way I am. I have never been a public animal. I’ve always been very quiet.
After more than four decades in the business, how have you seen the landscape of shoe design shift?
I sound very pretentious, but there are too many shoe designers now. “This is the new Manolo, this is the new this.” It’s extraordinary. Before it was the established ones—Bally, Ferragamo, Charles Jourdan—but nobody had a face or a kind of personality. I find it very surprising. Also, the decline of quality. They’re using not the best materials or the best manufacturers. But it’s good that I did inspire new people, because some of the people do exactly what I did! [laughs] They picked up one of my books and you can see what’s going on in the collections nowadays! But it’s okay! It’s exciting for me, but at the same time it’s kind of worrying. They should create something new. New technology and the new society have really made people consumers, and consumers without any kind of respect for what they do. Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy! Before it used to be they loved that shoe because it’s embroidered or whatever, and now they buy anything and they throw it away, they don’t take care of it. Nan Kempner, all those ladies who used to be the queens of New York, had the maid polish the soles of the shoes and it was like every shoe was new, all the time, because they did care about those things. Marvelous. It doesn’t exist anymore. Now you wear it, when it’s gone, it’s gone—boom. You throw it away. This the youngsters—most of them!
When you’re designing the shoe, beyond creating something that’s beautiful, what is the most important element to you?
It is three things: the design, the quality of the materials, and the technical bit of it. The technical thing is important because they have to be comfortable. Yes, they’re high, they’re very spindly heels maybe. Everyone’s doing shoes now that are very cartoonish! But I try to combine the three elements.
The nineties were of course a memorable time for you, and they’re currently enjoying a pretty major revival among fashion types. Did you enjoy that decade, aesthetically speaking?
Some of it. I think I really loved the dresses of Saint Laurent in the nineties—they were fantastic. I think that everything that Miss Coddington or Miss Wintour put on the magazine [Vogue was memorable]. In the nineties, it was really about picking out the best dress, everywhere. Now [it’s about] showing whatever people are doing. It seems to me that in the last 20 years, after the advent of the Internet showing everything immediately, people tend to lose the particular look. You get lost in this information; I think it’s really too much.
Fashion has really become a form of entertainment.
Yes, it’s a form of entertainment. Maybe because people like Monsieur Lagerfeld and Galliano knew the theatrical side, how to interpret the mood of the collection through the themes of the show. Still in my mind is the kabuki collection of Galliano, the spectacle of it. And then Lee McQueen did wonderful things, but you’re right, it’s all part of this huge entertainment. To me it used to be much more personal, now it’s just like we are getting lost. But maybe it’s just that people are educated that way. The other day I was shocked—some woman asked me, “Who is your favorite star of the last century?” I said, “Without any doubt, Julie Christie, I have an incredible passion for Julie Christie,” and she said to me, “Oh, I don’t know about her . . . “ I felt like strangling that poor woman! I said, “Go and buy Darling and Doctor Zhivago, and that’s it!”
Film has obviously been a recurring theme in your work. You created the incredible shoes for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and Pedro Almodóvar contributed to your book. Are there any pairs in cinema that loom especially large in your mind?
Oh, my God, I always imagine that terrible tarty shoe in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity with Barbara Stanwyck. [It had] a little vile ankle chain—a mule with a little marabou! It’s one of the moments I really remember in the cinema. The only memory I have nowadays is moments of old films. You asked me that and it came to me immediately! Also, The Devil Is a Woman with Marlene Dietrich—there’s a moment that you can see these little pumps that she has and it’s wonderful. Things like that I love.
The women who have inspired you over the years—Anna Piaggi, Paloma Picasso—are central to the book. Could you speak a little about their influences?
[They are all] people who have incredible, strong personalities and who evoked in me an incredible desire to do things. Anna was wonderful and incredible, or Paloma, who was like a childhood friend. All those women meant something to me—or Brigitte Bardot. A balance between Julie Christie and Bardot! They did represent the 20th century and still now the image is a Bardot hairdo. Nothing has changed very much. All the people who I put in the book, I’ve grown with them. I like writers like Mr. Vidal, who I think is so wonderful. People always say, Tennessee Williams—yes, he’s marvelous—and they say Truman Capote—yes, he’s wonderful—but they didn’t really touch my mind when I was growing up like Vidal. It’s an inspiration for me, the pages of those people. I hope people don’t find this pretentious, but these are the pages and moments that inspire what I do, the use of colors and the materials—all of them.
Did seeing this expansive array of your work in the book make you feel differently about anything?
I think, My God, I’ve been through a lot! [laughs] But I haven’t done yet what I wanted to do, more or less. I want more things, I want to experiment in new materials. In that aspect, I’m very old-fashioned. I’m very curious. Those pages say, “Yes, this is what I have done,” now the children get inspired or they copy or whatever, and I just move on. This book, maybe it’s there to say goodbye to those kind of shoes, [but] the people in the book who inspired me will be with me forever.
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