How does the career of a shoe master begin?
As all things that are important, I also began designing shoes by chance. When I was young I wanted to become a set designer. I was literally in love with Visconti’s films and, especially, with the costumes. In 1971, through some friends from New York, I managed to submit my sketches to Diana Vreeland, the then news editor of American Vogue. She didn’t have a positive opinion of the costumes, but she was fascinated by the shoes. So she suggested me focus on the accessorize.
I followed her advice and here I am.
Anyway, the cinema is always in my heart.
My last collaboration was with Sofia Coppola, for hers Marie Antoinette.

But the “Manolo”, as they are called by the fashion victims, were born only a year later…
Yes. Bacj in London, in 1972, I met Ossie Clark with whom I created my first collection. I remember my dreadful first official issue. I made a shoe using 118 cm of silk and the outcome was awful. The models staggered on the heels, and I was convinced that that would be my first and last collection. Instead, the public and the press were very enthusiastic defining it a “very sexy pace”. I worked for some time with Clark and the shoe we designed together with cherry patterns is, up to know, still my best seller.

You experimented a lot with materials…
I am convinced that anything can be turned into a shoe. Year ago I used titanium, it was very pretty but it made the shoe impossible to wear, it was too heavy. I also had lots of fun while creating an ivory shoe. It retrieved the shape of a Greek column and it closed with chiffon…it was amazing but we sold only four pairs. I also remember a PVC stiletto encrusted with golden stones, created on purpose for the coronation of a beauty pageant winner.

Do shoes need to make a woman look sexy or to make her walk in comfort?
Obviously comfort comes first. Thanks to the skilful Italian craftsmen that make my shoes I managed to produce sexy shoes, with very high heels and comfortable at the same time.

How do you create “Manolo”?
My collections have always been hand-made, because I can’t use computers. Then I send my sketches to the model-makers and they turn them into shoes. I have an average of 300 samples per season, of which only 100 are put on sale. In order to satisfy the taste of all our clients throughout the world we keep the models and change the colours.

What is it that you really don’t like?
Definitely wedges, I find women with platforms not pretty. And I don’t like men shoes. I find them boring. I myself wear the booties that remind of the XVIII and XIV centuries shoes: they are priceless.

To conclude, a compulsory question: will Carrie be able to buy again a pair of Manolo after they have been stolen in a cult episode of the TV show Sex and the City?
I am sorry, but I don’t know it…I don’t watch that kind of TV shows.

Alessandra Iannello

Italian version

Us Weekly however unveiled the film plot kept hidden until today.
So, besides a wonderful New York, unfailing fantastic clothes, comforting chats among friends and hot secrets unveiled we will find again Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha dealing with their life of eternal family “initials”.

Miranda will reconsider the virtues of living a chilled family life to the detriment of the job, Samantha will take back the ex-boy friend Smith Jerrod, Charlotte will find out a mixed blessing of motherhood, while Carrie and Mr Big…obviously they have problems.

Financial slump, gay weddings, the eternal dilemma between a pair of Manolo Blahnik and the very chic Christian Louboutin and much more.
“The shoe has always tried to be a loyal mirror of the real new York”, theorizes Bradley Jacobs, senior editor of Us weekly, “as far as the plot is concerned it is genial to see our heroes falling from rags to riches”

Will our heroes manage to overcome this too? If not the wedding, at least a couple of shoes…exclusively designer ones.

Italian version

In “Manolo Balhnik Drawings” you will find more than 120 sketches from the 1970s until the present day. A model for any taste from the most unconventional to the most sober through the glamour ones.
To present these works of art the greatest consumers of Manolo have been selected, the stars.
Bianca Jagger, Sofia Coppola, John Galliano and Kate Moss, but also real fashion guru, like Anna Wintour, André Leon Talley and Anna Piaggi.

Kate Moss, for example, at the question “What would you bring to the grave?” she answered “a pair of diamond earrings, my favourite jeans and dulcis in fundo…my Manolo Blahnik sandals”.
Divas as well have their weaknesses.

Italian version

It is about “Tacones de aguja. Fascinación y seducción”, temporary exhibition taken care of by Pier Luigi Muggiati under the sponsorship of the Italian Institute of Culture.

Stilettos as real master-works created by the Italian craftmanship as well as by the big international maison, who wore stars of the fashion system, in so defining their own personality through this indispensable detail of femininity, authentic component of sensuality for writers, and real symbol of feminine aggressiveness for sociologists and semiologists.

Since the first, revolutionary model of the 1940s by Christain Dior, followed in the post-war period by Salvatore Ferragamo until the more recent Prada, Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo, this range of stilettos is a great anthology of the works of art of the biggest fashion designers.

For the erotic game of the instep, of the slender ankle and of the hip-swing from a 8-10-12 centimetres height  – although the last collections reach until 20 cm height – Madrid welcomes 80 shoe-sculptures, real master-works of the made in Italy.

Tacones de aguja. Fascinación y seducción
8th May – 30th August 2009
http://museodeltraje.mcu.es/index.jsp

Italian version