The Marvellous Mr Blahnik

After five decades in the industry, Manolo Blahnik is still scaling new heights. Here, he takes a trip down fashion memory lane with Jeffrey Yan and opens up about what makes him tick, what ticks him off and his new-found relevance with the TikTok generation

- Jeffrey Yan

On the day we were supposed to speak, a volcano erupted on the Canary Islands, where Manolo Blahnik is isolating during the pandemic. The designer, who still uses a landline, and I were furiously trying to reach each other, to no avail. When we finally connected—more than 24 hours later, once the phone lines in his area of Spain were back up—Blahnik is apologetic and utterly gracious. In fact, he sounds every bit as charming as you would expect of a man who has made a signature look of impeccably tailored suits worn with dandyish bow ties and tortoiseshell glasses.

The image of Manolo Blahnik—both the man and his designs—is so clearly etched into our minds because he has been a footwear legend for 50 years now. Like the most famous pop stars, his shoes are known by their first names only. In fact, they have routinely been namechecked by the most famous pop stars—and one very famous fictional TV character.

Blahnik has managed to stay on top of his game for so long because he eschews—detests even—so many of the things that define fashion design and marketing these days. Trends and hype do not interest him. His shoes are faultlessly elegant, timeless in the best possible way, and inspired by a dazzlingly rich mine of references that can range from the Italian Renaissance to Imperial China. That last quality is a reflection of how his brilliant mind works. In conversation, his stories—all insider accounts of fashion lore—have a way of tumbling into one another. He can go from reminiscing about Diana Vreeland in one breath to raving about John Galliano the next, before ending on a rant about ugly sneakers. Here, a no‑holds‑barred conversation with the legend himself.