Manolo Blahnik, who has been awarded the title of Commander of the British Empire (CBE), was born in the Canary Islands (1942) to a Czech father and Spanish mother. His father left Prague in the 1930s to avoid rising fascism while his grandparents disappeared in the 1950s after the Communists took charge.
One of Blahnik’s greatest inspirations was his mother. She was always dissatisfied with the shoes from their hometown, so she made her own. In a solitary game, Manolo would shape the wrappers from his candies into small shoes. However, it wasn’t until many years later, in 1969, when he had a conversation with US Vogue’s editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland that he would think about creating shoes again.
THE LAWS OF SHOEMAKING
Blahnik’s parents wanted him to be a diplomat and enrolled him at the University of Geneva to major in Politics and Law. However, he changed his majors to Literature and Architecture. In 1965 Blahnik got his degree and moved to Paris to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts and Stage Set Design at the Louvre Art School, all while working at a vintage clothing shop. In 1969, he moved to London to work as a buyer at the fashion boutique “Feathers” and wrote for “L’Uomo Vogue”. He opened his first boutique in Chelsea, London/UK in 1970. To date, his flagship store remains in the same location.
Blahnik never studied shoemaking formally. He did so informally by visiting shoe factories and talking to pattern cutters, technicians and machine operators. At first, he designed men’s footwear. When mainstream shoe styles were still dominated by clunky platforms in the 1970s, he revived the sleek stiletto heel, which has since become a classic.
SENATORS AND PROSTITUTES
A mule is a style of shoe that has no back or constraint around the foot’s heel. Through the centuries, mules have changed in style and purpose and are no longer just boudoir shoes but are worn at any time and any occasion. In addition to Western examples, mules also originate from cultures such as Turkey and Egypt. The mule’s etymology comes from Ancient Rome, where the phrase “mulleus calceus” (mullet shoe) was used to describe the red or purple shoe worn by the three Roman senators and later higher magistrates.
In the early 1700s mules were typical indoor shoes for both men and women. However, as revealing one’s naked heels in public was, for some people, scandalous, by the mid-18th century the mules were associated with prostitution. Édouard Manet’s controversial painting “Olympia” depicts a nude woman wearing mules (chaussons-a word which was slang for “old prostitute”).
