Manolo Blahnik
(1942 - )
Manolo Blahnik was born in Santa Cruz, in the Canary Islands in November of 1943. Manolo moved to Geneva at the age of fifteen where he had his first encounter with the theater, opera, and fine restaurants. He studied law for a short period but soon switched to literature and art history.
Blahnik left Geneva for Paris in 1965 to study art and theater design. He worked at the trendy Left Bank shop "GO," where he met jewelry designer Paloma Picasso. With Paloma’s encouragement, Blahnik soon moved to London. While working at Feathers, a trendy boutique in London he continued to cultivate his connections to the world of fashion and culture and is known for his unique style.
Blahnik moved to New York City in 1969. He began working at the store Zapata, where he designed men’s saddle shoes. In 1972 Blahnik was introduced to Ossie Clark, then one of London’s most fashionable designers, who asked him to design the shoes for his women’s collection. While the shoes were not commercially successful, the press noticed their originality of design.
Blahnik had no formal training as a shoe-maker and initially his designs were structurally weak. He consults with a London shoe manufacturer in order to correct his lack of technical skills. In the early 1970s he opened a small shop on Church Road in London, which immediately becomes a meeting place for famous women. Blahnik purchased Zapata from its owner in 1973. In 1978, he introduced a line exclusive to Bloomingdale’s. Blahnik opened a second free standing store a year later on New York’s Madison Avenue.
In 1982, George Malkemus and his partner, Anthony Yurgaitis, went into business with Blahnik. They closed the Madison Avenue shop, opened a store on West Fifty Fourth Street, and limited the distribution of Blahnik’s shoes to such prestigious retailers as Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus. Manolo Blahnik’s shoes began to appear on the runways of designers from Yves Saint Laurent, Bill Blass and Geoffrey Beene to Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein, Isaac Mizrahi, and John Galliano. His shoes are eccentric miniature sculptures, balanced on very high heels and are known as “Manolos.”
In 1999, Manolo Blahnik was awarded the prize for the best designer of accessories for the year. In February of 2003, the exhibit Manolo Blahnik, A Retrospective is dedicated to him by the Design Museum of London. His shoes which are considered works of art have been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
