Manolo Blahnik doesn't just make shoes, he creates works of art - and women are queuing up to purchase them, writes Louise East
IN MANOLO BLAHNIK'S Chelsea studio, a quiet revolution is taking place. To his legions of fans, Blahnik is the godfather of high heels, the cappo di tutti cappiwho created stilettos of such spindly perfection, the Sex and the Citywriters spun an entire episode around Carrie Bradshaw being mugged for her Manolos.
But right now, in Blahnik's low-ceilinged shop tucked off the King's Road, high heels are fighting a losing battle with, of all things, the kitten heel, a style not seen on fashionable feet since the late 1990s. In cheeky plaids, in mustard crocodile, in shimmering azure silk, the 5cm heels are everywhere.
"I'm sick of the heel," cries Manolo Blahnik. "[Low heels] are selling like crazy. I thought maybe it was too soon to do them again because I did it about 10 years ago, but ah! It's catching." That "ah" is a little high-pitched scream, something Blahnik unleashes to signal delight and horror, and also when he meanders into a particularly baffling dead end.
"Why am I talking about this?" he shrieks after one such foray. "Why? You must guide me because I tend to have these very tangential, twisted conversations. Whatever comes to me. Whooof!" Which is all very well, but steering Manolo Blahnik is about as easy as arm-wrestling Loch Erne. Happily, his diversions are endlessly entertaining and cover everything from the flowers at Yves St Laurent's funeral, to his love of Edna O'Brien and the Irish accent ("My favourite accent in the world. Not like the Scottish. All that shush-shushing. So irritating.") Blahnik's own accent is so delightfully inclusive of several European nations, it deserves Unesco protection. The word "moth", for example, is pronounced to rhyme with "Howth"; "rivalry" to rhyme with "chivalry".
Blahnik, who was born in 1942, grew up on a banana plantation on the Canary Islands. He is the son of a Spanish mother and a Czech father. After completing an arts degree in Geneva, he moved first to Paris and then to London.
Initially, it was the theatre which caught his attention, but when he showed Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of American Vogue, his sketches, she insisted he design shoes instead.
"I was de-routed by Miss Vreeland. But really, I don't regret it one bit." The world first took notice when Blahnik made the shoes for his mate, Ossie Clarke's fashion show in 1972; lime green sandals with red leather cherries for straps, electric blue suede with chrome yellow flashes.
With no formal training, Blahnik had no idea how to make high heels, and carved them out of rubber which buckled and swayed as the high-beams heated the runway. "I don't know how I'm still here," he says serenely. "But somehow people got excited by it. They were very radically weird, those shoes."
When we meet, Blahnik is wearing a dusky purple double-breasted suit, with a pale pink shirt, a striped yellow and purple knitted tie, mauve and white socks and a pair of bright orange, suede slip-ons. The socks, he informs me, are made from Irish-spun cotton lisle and he has worn them in honour of The Irish Times.
Next month, a Manolo Blahnik concession, the first in Ireland, opens in Brown Thomas in Dublin. Blahnik plans to visit the store fresh from a tour of the US, where "personal appearances" frequently require him to spend several hours meeting the fans who queue round the block, clutching bags of Manolos for the designer to sign. "I sign anything," Blahnik says philosophically. "I sign places that are rude to talk about."
At some point earlier this decade, Blahnik ceased being a shoe designer, and became a fashion icon and one-word shorthand for high heels, cocktails and glamour. Although he has always had celebrity fans ("Better than sex," Madonna said of her Manolos), he only really registered outside Planet Fashion after his shoes were name-checked in practically every episode of Sex and the City. Or as Blahnik calls it, "that Sex in New York".
Pressed a little, he admits to having rather mixed feelings about his starring role. "For commercial purposes, it's been a gift from heaven, but at the same time, I feel very ambiguous about it because I've never understood quite where a desire for fame comes from. I was never into it. And suddenly, without even wanting it, I've been pushed into it, which I'm not sure I want."
So he doesn't like being famous? "No. No I don't. When I see my name written on the shoes or on the boxes, it doesn't relate to me at all. Isn't that awfully sad? You'd think it would make me happy, but it doesn't. The only thing I'm really happy doing is being in the factories with the people who make the shoes. I really get excited about that. It could be days and days that I'm there and it seems to me like two seconds."
In truth, the most interesting thing about the shoes designed by Manolo Blahnik is not their inclusion in a HBO TV series, but the fact that each one is hand-produced in Italy, by the same craftsmen and women Blahnik has employed for 30 years. Up close, they are astonishingly beautiful things, all curves and minute stitching, like something from another age.
Blahnik not only does upwards of 300 different designs a year, producing a beautiful watercolour sketch of each, but also hand-carves the lasts and oversees the painstaking production of each sample himself. "The only thing I don't do any more is construct the moulds. Once, I almost cut my finger off. It's pretty dangerous for someone neurotic like me, so now somebody with steady hands does it."
Although his shoes are brilliantly wayward (this winter, high-heeled, green suede brogues are decorated with tiny cut-out polka dots in scarlet leather, while a concoction of patent leather and tartan wool resemble upmarket galoshes) and appear to epitomise fashion at its fluttery, fol-de-rolbest, Blahnik is reluctant to even call what he does fashion.
"I'm not a fashion designer, as such. I do shoes, yes, but they're just objects that I like. I never think about what's going to be in fashion or out of fashion. Sometimes we have to compromise and do a few things that get into the mood, but I refuse to do this platform nonsense. I've never seen shoes so ugly. They do it to fill the pages of magazines and possibly they're an entertainment for the readers, but people won't buy this stuff any longer. It's another time going on now."
Ah yes, the credit crunch. For many, shoes such as Blahnik's, which retail for hundreds of euro, epitomise the kind of fevered spending which cries out for a sharp corrective dose of recession. In years to come, it's possible that the likes of Carrie Bradshaw, with her square miles of lime-green, rabbit-fur clogs, will come to symbolise the Marie Antoinette-ish excesses of our age.
So isn't Blahnik just a teensy bit worried? "No, no, I'm so small, I should be fine. What I do is just for people who like what I do, women who want quality, women who want colour, but not madness. I don't think it's the time for that any longer."
Although some might quibble with the word "small" to describe a company with concessions as far-flung as Hong Kong, Dubai, Russia and the US, Blahnik is probably right. Even in times of recession, true luxury usually survives even as the imitators head to the guillotine.
Blahnik has another secret weapon up his sleeve, too. Not his carefully hand-stretched leather, not the celebrity endorsements, not even his controversially comfortable kitten heels. No, what may ensure Blahnik's survival is the strange, almost mystical of effect of shoes on the female psyche. "Women love to change," says Blahnik. "They love quick changes and shoes are the only artefact to allow that. Flat, mid, high, pin - each of those heels makes some kind of change. It's a theatrical gesture, the act of putting on a shoe. On top of that, men seem to love it and women like to please men. I think it always comes back to women's desire to change."
• Manolo Blahnik's shoes will be available at Brown Thomas, Dublin, from early October.
High heels
Design is important, colour is important, the quality of the materials is important but the most important thing is the balance. If a shoe is going to kill you, don't buy it.
Yves St Laurent
He was a great, great man. Very shy, but funny when he knew you. Back in the mid-1960s, I was in Paris, and after work, I would go down to the first YSL shop just to look at the people queuing up to get in; Veruschka, all the great models of the time. It was incredibly exciting.
I used to love doing things with hands. I made little dresses for my dog, even for lizards. Anything that walked.
Being a son
My mother is 95. I just talked to her now and she asked me what I'd eaten. She thinks I'm 12 or something.
Being Manolo
A cross between a technician and a designer is what I'm trying to be all the time. Shapes and volumes are very important. If you do the wrong volume, forget it. It's a flop.
I love the smell of naphthalene. When you go to funerals and sniff, I love that smell.
There are so many things I love about Ireland. The tweed. The linen. The houses. The perfection. Even the mingy little cottages are beautiful.
The US
What do they want in the America now? They want something called a 'resort' collection. Ah, Jesus, what the hell is this? I'd be happy to do just one collection a year of a thousand shoes, but this is torture.
Donegal tweed
Irish tweeds are the best. I have one suit of Donegal tweed in a dirty dusty violet, with huge blue checks. Not tiny little window panes but huge things. It's scratchy, yes, but I lined it with cotton.
Alan Bennett
I consume, I eat pages by Mr Bennett. Every line is a diamond.
Jimmy Choo
This Jimmy Choo is not a company on the same level as mine. I do it on my own, whereas this company is run by millions of people. I don't have any jealousy. It's not in my nature.
Being copied
Maybe it would be different if I had written a book and somebody copied it. That would make me unhappy because it's very difficult to write, but shoes are just, well, everybody rips everybody else off.
The most popular colour is always black, and you know why? It's comfortable.
Favourite customers
I love the girls with no money who come on the first day of the sale. They're my favourites, not the rich girls. I prefer the ones who really want it.