Manolo’s Shoe Blog

Manolo says, one of the Manolo’s dear internet friends has asked him the question.

Querido Manolo,

I have just received an invitation to present a paper in Helsinki this summer at a conference on the laws of war. This means that I shall be the only twenty-something-year-old female in a hall full of big, gruff, snarly, manlymen. Since genetic constitution and chromosomal make-up render it impossible for me to project an image of gruff, snarly, girlitude, I prefer to present myself as both a lover and a fighter. Could you please recommend a pair of show-stopping shoes that would convey this image?

Further considerations:
(1) Price and heel altitude are distant seconds to superfantasticness.
(2) I think it’s time for me to buy my first Manolos.

If you decide to post this query, could you please leave my name out? Muchisimas gracias!

With warmest wishes from frosty NYC,

Manolo says, mucho-macho, snarly, gruffy-huffy, law-of-war manly men? In Finland?

Oy, to the Manolo this does not sound like fun. Indeed, it sounds as if the Manolo’s nameless friend is riding out to the annual Mongol Golden Horde company picnic, featuring all the roast badger and curdled mares’ milk you can eat, followed by the spirited game of “Kick the Head”.

In this case, she should do as the Manolo does when forced to participate in the strange native rites, behave as if you were the eccentric 19th century British explorer.

Be polite, be friendly, be sympathetic, but make it clear to the cannibalistic savages, through your dress and your comportment, that you represent the superior culture, one which offers these benighted souls the benefits of indoor plumbing and the afternoon tea.

Thus, when the lawyers of war offer you the drink of honeyed mead in the polished skull of their slain-in-battle senior partner, you must sip politely, and smilingly promise them, in your best Queen’s English, that you will return soon with the Royal Navy gunboat and destroy their God-forsaken way of life.

Of the course, in the meantime, the Manolo’s friend must dress in the manner that shows them that she is the powerful and important person in her own culture, one who must not be trifled with (or, at the least, one who must not be cut up and tossed into the bubbling cauldron of lunch.)

What better way to do this than with the aggressively beautiful shoes?

Here are two classic pairs of the Maestro Manolo Blahnik’s shoes that one should not live without.

Either in the mid-heel or the high-heel, in the dark brown or the black, these shoes are serious enough for the everyday work, and yet, kick-ass enough to quell the native insurrection.

If one truly wishes to leave the savages speachless, however, then the Manolo suggests these slightly less practical pumps from the Christian Louboutain.

Metallic python?

Expected reaction: “Ooooooh, shiny! Lawyer Grog think pretty lady in glittery snake shoes have mighty mojo. Must listen attentively to presentation.”

Manolo says, the Maestro Manolo Blahnik (whom we worship with all of our being) has given the typical Blanikian stream-of-the-consciousness interview to the Guardian. Here is the juicy and entertaining except.

You ask if a woman can wear my shoes if she is not blessed with fine ankles? All is not lost! There are tricks to draw the eye; a bow at the ankle to divert the gaze and the cut over the toes. The woman I would refuse is the one who asks for platform shoes. If one of the designers I work with is having a platform-heeled moment, I say no, I just can’t. The platform is the Frankenstein of footwear.

The strangest place I have seen my shoes, well I tell you, once I was in Beijing, at the Ming emperors’ tombs, and you queue, queue, queue to get into the subterranean interlocking vaults and down there, I spotted a young woman, an American, and I said: ‘You’re wearing my pumps!’ I was happy she thought my heels were comfortable for sight-seeing in China. It was pitch dark almost, but of course I could spot my shoes. Mind you, for sightseeing, she had chosen them in off-white, well, a very light beige.

Truly, he is the most delightful of humans!

Manolo says, once again, the Maestro Manolo Blahnik proves why he shall forever and eternity be our hero, he is simply the most witty, gracious, and charming person.

The word “y’all” comes with hesitation.

Manolo Blahnik sounds it out.

“Yaaaawwwl.”

If he practiced enough, he’d master a Southern drawl someday.

But not today.

“My biggest dream is to talk like a Southern person,” Blahnik says as he settles into a cozy chair at Neiman Marcus in Houston. He blots a trickle of sweat from his face and lets out a faint sigh.

“I need an aspirin. I have a headache,” he says, sweeping his hand across his forehead.

“I was in London on Monday, Atlanta on Tuesday, now Houston. I’m just crazy. I’m 63 years old, you know. I’m no spring chicken!”

[…]

On this day, hundreds of women have lined the shoe department at Neiman Marcus to have a moment with the designer. He signs the soles of their shoes, one by one, with pleasure.

“I’m so glad I don’t have high heels on,” he says laughing.

One woman kicks up her black patent-leather ankle boot. “I don’t know why they like this shoe, but they do,” Blahnik said. If anything, he’s without ego and shies from a chance to promote himself or his shoes.

Another woman shows him color photographs of her 80-pair collection.

“Now, that’s far too many shoes for anyone to own,” he said.

He signs the shoe, smiling.

Charm and graciousness, qualities in short supply in the modern world, but which our Maestro has in abundance.

Manolo says, here are the shoes of the Maestro suitable to this auspicious occasion.

Manolo shouts, Happy Birthday to the Maestro Manolo Blahnik!!!

The maestro di tutti maestri whose miraculous birth occured this day in 1942.

Manolo says, you must go read the most amusing sample sale adventures of the Claire at the Fashion Bomb blog. Be certain to scroll down to read about the sample sale of the Maestro Manolo Blahnik.

Manolo says, here is the marvelous New York Daily News article on the maestro di tutti maestri, the inimitable Manolo Blahnik.

So when Sofia Coppola needed a designer to re-create the period’s decadent shoes that were handed to the spoiled queen (Kirsten Dunst) on a posh pillow, she called on Blahnik.

Her film, “Marie Antoinette,” opening Oct. 20, is partly based on an Antonia Fraser biography of the queen that takes a particularly sympathetic tack, much like Manolo’s, on the subject.

Movie buff Blahnik started his homework by studying original 18th-century shoes in Paris. The Victoria and Albert museum in London gave him footwear that belonged to the French queen. “So I did some kind of a cross between academic and a little bit of fantasy,” he says.

But then, his shoes - especially the film’s, a collection of candy-colored heels embellished with ribbon and buttons and beads - are a fantasy.

“Indeed, that is the only thing I want to offer to people,” he says. “Of course, I’m like everybody else; I have to do black and brown shoes and a little bit of Mary Janes and satin, but my nature is kind of theatrical, simple and dramatic.”

Yet again, the Maestro proves why he is worthy of our adoration.

Manolo says, this it is why the humble Manolo the Shoeblogger adores the most gracious Maestro Manolo.

Looking dapper in a powder blue suit with a checkered bowtie, the 62-year-old Blahnik happily signed shoe after shoe while mugging for the cameras with excited fans. He was animated and jovial, and seemed genuinely appreciative of everyone who came, even making a point to thank each person for buying his shoes.

Manolo says, ayyyyyy! There is the super fantatastic article about the shoes in this month’s edition of the National Geographic, entitled The Joy of Shoes!

Naturally, there are many pictures, but it is the writing that speaks most wonderfully to the Manolo. Here is the sample.

Olga Berluti loves men’s feet—a passion, not a fetish, she says. The passion began with her convent schooling in Italy. A long corridor led to the chapel and a 14th-century statue of Christ. “I would approach the altar,” she remembers. “The nailed feet of Christ were exactly on the same level as my eyes. I stared and stared. I said to myself: When I am older, I will remove the nails. I will relieve the suffering of men’s feet.”

Berluti, small and slight with short black hair and eyes so dark they seem to be all pupil, does not seem tethered to the ground. She lives simply, does not eat meat and does not wear leather (”My life is flesh and blood already”). She wears only natural fibers—always white. On her feet: white cotton sneakers in summer, white wool shoes in winter. She is an ascetic in a universe of extravagance. “I sublimate myself. I suffer. I have spent my life at men’s feet,” says Olga, Our Lady of Shoes.

She speaks in Celtic rune and Delphic pronouncement. “Man is a vagabond deluxe. We are moving through to the perfection of gesture,” she says. So what if the utterances make little sense. We are talking mystique and shoes with the chiaroscuro of a Caravaggio. We are talking shoes with the sleek, menacing profile of a mako shark, shoes decorated with piercings, tattoos, sometimes scars. They are shoes, she says, for the hidden warrior inside every man. Shoes, also, for the man with four to twelve thousand dollars to spend on a made-to-order dream.

Her atelier, in an 18th-century building in Paris’s Marais, is a stage set. A shoemaker’s bench with rows of apothecary bottles sits in the corner. Do the bottles contain essence of sorrow? Tincture of pain? No, merely fragrant oils and dyes. The lasts—she calls them ex-votos—of Berluti’s famous clientele rest on low tables. There are lasts that belonged to Pablo Picasso (”We made his sandals”); Jean Cocteau (”He liked to wear shoes without socks”); Andy Warhol (”He asked for his right loafer to be patched—and be very visible”).

Once a year Olga Berluti invites clients to the Swann Club soiree, a black-tie affair, with champagne, not just to drink, but to clean shoes. “The alcohol makes them shine, but it must be chilled; it must be a very dry, a grand champagne.”

In Olga Berluti’s world, the relationship between man and shoe is complex. “Shoes adopt and tame you, and you adopt and tame them, like domesticating a wild animal,” she says. “You buy a pair of shoes you adore, but they are too edgy, too avant-garde. Perhaps your wife made you buy them. You put them away, and little by little this style, this color you’re not used to seeps in. You buy a jacket that goes with them, or a different color shirt. One day, you realize you have become the man your wife envisioned. The shoes revealed something new, something unexpected in you.”

The Manolo he has commented in the past about the divine Olga Berluti, whom the Manolo considers to be his kindred soul.

Speaking of the kindred souls, there is, of the course, the wonderful section about the Maestro Manolo Blahnik, whom your humble shoeblogger worships, and who can perfectly express why we who love the shoes love the shoes.

Still, it is pointed out, it is only a shoe.

Blahnik nods. “Yes, only a shoe, but if I provide escape for the woman who wears it, if for only a few minutes, it brings a bit of happiness to someone, well, then, perhaps, it is something more than a shoe.”

It is so true.

Now, you must go to the website of the National Geographic and see this marvelous production.