By Andrea Byrne
Sunday December 14 2008
'I cannot tolerate destruction for the sake of destruction," Manolo Blahnik announces, pursing his lips in disgust. He's referring to the defacing of various Georgian buildings he spotted as he walked around Dublin the previous evening. "They should be restored piece by piece, stone by stone," he continues, waving photographs he'd printed off the internet to illustrate what he's talking about.
Why would the world's biggest shoe designer, who boasts Oprah, Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna among his biggest fans, care about Dublin and its apparent disfigurement?
A short audience with Manolo makes you realise that he cares about a lot more in life than just shoes. He seems surprisingly modest and more comfortable when he's not talking about himself and his craft. In fact, it's a challenge to try to get him to explain why he thinks his shoes generate such hysteria. "I still don't know why," he hesitates. "I guess because they're feminine, they don't date and yet they still do have a few elements of fashion in them."
Dapperly dressed, he's sporting a greyish checked suit, a white shirt, a blueish-grey cashmere cardigan, a polka dot Dixie-bow and navy suede loafers, his silver hair neatly slicked back. By his usually flamboyant standards, which can include yellow knitted ties and orange loafers, he's dressed down. The only constant staple of Manolo's attire is his Woody-Allenesque thick-rimmed black glasses.
Very chivalrous, he bows his head as he shakes my hand, insists on pouring me a glass of water and in true gentlemanly fashion, doesn't sit until I do.
However, as he does go to sit down, he lets out a shriek of pain, easing himself gently into the chair. He tore ligaments in his leg the previous month and had wires put in. It's clear he likes the drama of it all, and insists on showing me the bandages.
This is not Manolo's first time in Ireland; he was here back in the Seventies. On this occasion, however, he's launching his new shoe concession in Brown Thomas. Unsurprisingly, legions of women have turned up to meet the man.
Manolo's big break came in 1971, while on holiday in New York with friends. Diana Vreeland, the then fashion editor of Vogue, invited him to meet her. Though "terrified", he showed her his sketches. Impressed, Vreeland advised him to design them.
Thought it's nearly 40 years since Manolo designed his first shoe, he's still highly involved in the design process and claims to oversee every pair of shoes that leaves his studio.
He has a tendency to go off on tangents about the most unlikely of subjects, and it's all but impossible to rein him in. He's very fashion-y in the way he talks, constantly using words like "hideous" and "horrific" with Devil Wear's Prada-like aplomb. He speaks fast and fluidly in a rich, pronounced, almost aristocratic accent: a consequence of having a Czech father, a Spanish mother, a childhood spent on a banana plantation in the Canary Islands, followed by spells in Geneva, then Paris, where he studied art, before finally settling in London -- a place he still calls home.
He is the grandfather of high-fashion shoes. Bianca Jagger wore a pair of his shoes in 1977 when she rode into Studio 54 on a horse. The late Princess of Wales wouldn't have been seen without them on her feet. While for Madonna, a pair of Manolos are "as good as sex... and they last longer". However, it's undoubtedly Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw who made the sexagenarian designer a household name and a multi-millionaire.
I tell him that I remember reading that fashion designers paid serious money for product placement on Sex and the City. He looks at me in bewilderment, his mouth wide open. "I never paid, are you crazy? Miss Parker bought my stuff since the Eighties in Los Angeles. Patricia Field was a customer too."
Back to the shoes: Manolo Blahnik likes toe-cleavage. His heels tend to be thin and high, the designs are never dictated by trends and invariably tend to be something of an architectural spectacle. You're liable to pay anything from €450 to €1,200.
Is there any shoe style you don't like? "Platforms," he says with a face that suggests he's just drunk sour milk. He particularly detests Perspex platforms. "They look like shoes from p*rn movies," he says with a panting demonstration. "p*rn movies, I find comical, they're repulsive. I don't know why anyone would watch them." Speaking of sex, Manolo has said in the past that he is neither interested in men nor women, though he did express to me an appreciation of Asian women.
The 65-year-old is well-read, a consequence of his insomnia. "I don't sleep well, jet-lag or no jet-lag. But I can operate on very little sleep. I have been doing so for years. Three hours sleep and I'm very fresh." He was recently awarded the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style Award, but admits to being a reluctant celebrity, "I just did this thing in Hollywood and it was absolute torture," he says, rolling his eyes to the ceiling (he does that a lot). "I don't like parties, I do it because I have to ... I never thought I would end up doing this kind of thing. It makes me laugh."
