Manolo Blahik, the king of shoes: my life from my mother to Sex & the City.
He opened two new sections of the Footwear museum in Vigevano.
He relies on local craftsmanship since the beginning of his career.
Manolo Blahnik is a worldwide fashion icon, but if you see him or talk to him he doesn’t seem to be in fashion at all: he wears a half-belt navy coat, bow tie, grey stripy socks with a yellow colour heel.
He looks more like an old time dandy; an old fashioned gentleman of exquisite manners and great nature, so kind that he even speaks Italian.
Of Spanish mother and Czech father, he was internationally educated: he studied literature in Geneva; art in Paris then started his carer in London as a set designer.
He reveres his late mother Manuela: “Now she’s not there anymore, but I always think about her and in anything I do I always try to make her feel proud of me.
She used to take me to the Prado museum in Madrid and she would always make me notice feet and shoes in the paintings”.
After his first experience as a set designer, he came to Vigevano and trusting the local artisans, he started his ascent to worldwide fame.
He doesn’t like celebrities he’s an old time dandy who‘s words sound out of fashion like, “ I miss the bag-shoes matching set, wedges look awful, you can’t possibly buy clothes and shoes online”.
