Shoe Designer Manolo Blahnik on His Love Affair With The East
As his business returns to the city with a new boutique in Lee Gardens, celebrated designer Manolo Blahnik talks hit collaborations, memories of Hong Kong and why he’s never thought about retiring.
Landing at Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak airport was an experience few can forget, not least Manolo Blahnik, who first arrived in 1989. “Suddenly I was between two blocks of apartments and I thought, ‘Oh my God, what is going on? Is this real?’” The celebrated Spanish designer, whose shoes have remained the epitome of elegance for generations of women – from Princess Diana and Bianca Jagger to Karlie Kloss – first opened a shop in Landmark in the early ’90s. Visiting the city twice a year over the decade, he remembers it as “exciting and vibrating”.
After having no Hong Kong presence for 10 months, the business is marking a new phase of expansion in partnership with the Bluebell Group, opening a 900-square-foot Lee Gardens boutique in March. This comes not only on the back of a record financial year for the business, with turnover increasing 69 percent in 2022, but also after winning a 20-year-long China trademark battle, the brand will at last have a presence in the mainland with the opening of a Shanghai boutique in November. “It feels as though we can now have our arms around this region in a new way,” says the designer’s niece and CEO, Kristina. A further two more Hong Kong stores are planned for Pacific Place and Ocean Centre.
“You know I love everything about Hong Kong, except for the humidity – oh my God, the humidity!” says Blahnik, speaking via Zoom from the brand’s new Mayfair headquarters. Although his slender stilettos are the steadfast companion of the 21st-century woman, Blahnik seems as if from another era. He first arrived in London in 1969 and now splits his time between homes in Chelsea and Bath, on the way acquiring a certain British upper-classness while still retaining a flamboyance and theatricality that are distinctly Spanish. He’s dressed immaculately in a red double-breasted blazer, a white polo neck and gloves, yet despite his formal appearance, he insists, “Call me Manolo!”
An audience with the designer is rare. “I don’t do many interviews these days because I talk too much or say the wrong thing. When I start talking it’s like turning on a tap. I’ve been like that since I was a boy and I’m never going to change now.” While his being more versed in the language of romance than business speak might occasionally exasperate his team, Blahnik is terrific company and makes for a fabulous interviewee.
Our conversation is peppered with extraordinary anecdotes, sometimes sparking from something else entirely. From André Leon Talley seating him next to Jackie Kennedy at Diana Vreeland’s memorial, demanding “you stay there!” and designing shoes for John Galliano “the greatest artist of the 21st century” before he joined Dior, to the time he did something “illegal” for Vreeland. “She said to me, ‘Oh Manolo, I just adore Devon clotted cream.’ I said, ‘I’ll get it for you, Mrs Vreeland.’” Blahnik rushed to Fortnum & Mason to buy the dairy goods and promptly flew with it on the plane to New York.
In fact, had it not been for Vreeland, Blahnik might never have gone into shoes at all. Born in 1942 in the Canary Islands to a Spanish mother and Czech father, an early memory was of his nanny’s Catalonian espadrilles. “She had terrible legs, but she was the sweetest thing.” His fascination started from there, and famously he’d go on to fashion tiny shoes for lizards from aluminium. “You know, I have a picture somewhere my father took of me around that time, completely nude, just holding a shoe. Can you imagine?”
It was a remote upbringing; with no airport on the island, any connection with the outside world came via boat from the Spanish mainland. Blahnik’s father did, however, have a projector and got hold of films starring the “extraordinary” Asian-American actress Anna May Wong. “That was the beginning of my love affair with Asia and China, and exotic things and costumes, which I’m still so excited about today.”
After attending university in Geneva, Blahnik moved to Paris to pursue art and set design when his friend Paloma Picasso introduced him to Vreeland, then Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue. “I was absolutely terrified,” he recalls. Showing her his sketches for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the original fashion diva was instead impressed by the characters’ footwear and told him, “Stick to shoes, stick to shoes, stick to shoes!” he says, moving his screen to proudly show me her portrait still hung on his wall.
On her advice, Blahnik moved to London and founded the company in 1970, with its first boutique in Chelsea. His slender, feminine stilettos were in contrast to the era’s popular chunky platforms. In the early days, his biggest coup was making shoes for British designer Ossie Clark’s 1972 runway collection. Modelled by Salvador Dali’s muse Amanda Lear, among others, the colourful heels featured vines winding up the leg and dangling cherries – a design that’s still sold today, with a red iteration being exclusive to Hong Kong. “I don’t have enough words of gratitude for Ossie,” he says.
His catwalk compatibility would go on to be one of his greatest strengths. After opening a store in New York in 1983 on West 54th Street, his styles were soon the footwear of choice for the golden era of ‘90s American designers such as Calvin Klein, Isaac Mizrahi and Oscar de La Renta. Even Anna Wintour became such a fan that she hasn’t worn any other shoes since 1994, her signature nude slingbacks Blahnik designs especially for her.
But it was thanks to the series Sex and the City that Blahnik’s mainstream popularity sky-rocketed and he reached mononym status. The shoe-obsessed sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, referred to the shoes as her “Manolos”. Among the countless styles worn by the character was the jewelled blue Hangisi pump for her marriage to Mr Big; the style has remained a bridal classic ever since.
Trying to grapple with what comes after such popularity was his niece Kristina’s first challenge when she joined the business as CEO in 2013. “We’d had this incredible Candice Bushnell moment for over a decade, so we thought: what next? We knew who we were pre-popular moment, so what does it mean to be post that?” she says.
In the years since, the brands cachet has been bolstered by some surprising collaborations, from Rihanna, with whom Blahnik designed a pair of jewel-encrusted thigh-high denim boots, to Birkenstock: he reimagined the hippy favourites in luxe blue and fuchsia velour, saying the sandals “have been in my wardrobe since the very beginning of time”,as well as British fashion darling Grace Wales Bonner on two menswear collections. “There has to be a mutual admiration for what they do, otherwise I wouldn’t do it,” says Blahnik. Most recently, he worked with stylist Andrew Mukamal to design custom shoes in various hues of pink for Margot Robbie’s Barbie press tour. “I saw her in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and I thought she was brilliant.”
Still independently owned, in 2021 Blahnik celebrated 50 years in business. Not only has he outlasted many designers of his generation, but at 81 he’s achieving success others can only dream about. His secret? “You know, I never thought about having success. I never think of myself as a successful person. This is just what happened to me. I’m doing something contrary to everything else because I’m doing something that isn’t current,” he replies.
Indeed, Blahnik belongs to that rare cohort of designers, including Lagerfeld and Armani, who never stray far from their uncompromising vision. Not seduced by fleeting trends, his designs, while also being instantly recognisable, have timeless appeal. Bestsellers today are the suede buckled Maysale, first created in 1991, as well as the Hangisi and the BB court shoe, which were both designed more than 15 years ago.
Famed for incorporating cultural references into his designs too, Blahnik’s inspirations span from Matisse to Josephine Bonaparte and embroidery techniques used in fifth-century China. Such is the use of silk in his shoes that the designer maintains he’s always had “a continuous dialogue” with the country. He credits the Met Museum’s 2015 show China: Through the Looking Glass, as “a continuation of my dreams. The porcelain, the textures, the dresses! It was the most beautiful exhibition I’ve ever seen.”
Today Blahnik still designs six collections a year – four for women and two for mens – as well as accessories. He’ll soon travel to his home in the Canary Islands to start on the 2025-26 designs. “Imagine! We have to work so far in advance; it’s not like dresses, shoes are very different; it takes a lot of time to arrive at the right point.”
A notorious perfectionist, he still visits his factory in Vigevano, Italy, where all his shoes are made, closely following the prototype development process each summer. Separation during the pandemic was especially difficult. “I had a month of horror explaining every stitch over zoom—10 hours of Zoom a day. I’m Zoomed out forever!”
After all these years, does designing shoes still thrill him? “Oh definitely, I’m starting to get to an age where people retire; I never thought about retirement or anything like that.”
He does, however, think the company is in safe hands. “My niece has an incredible natural gift for business. I don’t know where she gets it from because my mother was a disaster, my father was a disaster, I am a disaster. So, I’m very happy.”
Under Kristina’s tenure, the brand has doubled down on its direct-to-consumer business, expanding stores worldwide. Today there are more than 300 points of sale and 20 flagship boutiques. “It’s about being the last pair of hands before our little babies go to their forever homes,” she says, adding the China trademark ruling triumph was “a hugely emotional moment. I remember calling my uncle and my mother to tell them, we were all nearly in tears.”
Undoubtedly, the move is a huge opportunity for the business, given the country’s appetite for luxury goods. But especially for Blahnik, whose love affair with the East dates back to childhood. “Oh, please tell me they still have those old buildings in Shanghai,” he says. “The mixture of old and new and two cultures works so well.”
(Hero Image: the new Manolo Blahnik store in Lee Gardens)
The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
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