by Shadia

Manolo Blahnik

/ Shoes / Shoe Designers /

It has come to the point that the name no longer evokes the person’s face, but his creation. Manolo Blahnik is a household name, and is more often than not associated with specific shoe features, as opposed to his own facial features.

Born in the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands comes a man that has had a hand in defining the footwear design industry. Having been in the industry for over 30 years, this Spanish shoemaker initially geared himself towards set design.

However, a visit to New York in 1970, originally discussing theater designs, soon led Blahnik to creating shoes in London by 1971. A couple of years later, Blahnik opened up his own store in Chelsea, which still stands today as the design house, head office and also as the largest of the Blahnik stores.

The shoes, often a stiletto-heel standard as seemingly favored by main character Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City, have had their own imprint in the American, Spanish and British fashion industry. Blahnik has also worked with Jean Paul Gaultier, Carolina Herrera and John Galliano, amongst many other designers, in past couture shows. His footwear designs have garnered him several international awards over the years, yet it is the aforementioned television show, Sex and the City, which seems to have punctuated his shoes as a household name.

Raising a woman’s heels as high as five and a half inches off the ground, Blahnik’s designs can decorate a woman’s feet with varying details such as laces, ribbons, beads or rings. He has also employed materials just as original as his designs, such as the use of lightweight aluminum to create the Avion in 1982 or the aluminum shoehorn design in 2006. The heel-less shoe is another style this shoe mogul first touched in the late 70s to the early 80s, and was revisited again in 2006.

And today, Blahnik’s freshest collection of heels takes influence from a recent visit to Turkey, graced in architecture he was enamored by.

There are currently two boutiques located in the US: New York and Las Vegas.