1. Manolo Blahnik
Slingbacks, $485.
Every Shoe
Tells a
Story
By Suzanne S. Ego Design. CA
M anolo Blahnik was born on November 28th, 1942
in Santa Cruz de la Palma in the Canary Islands, to a
Czech father and Spanish mother. He and sister Evan-
gelina grew up on the family’s banana plantation, and were home
educated. Besides their grandfather’s house, there were no nearby
neighbors. The family frequently traveled to Madrid and Paris,
where his mother bought clothes from her favorite designers
while his father visited those cities’ tailors.Young Manolo enjoyed
looking at the designs in the fashion magazines his mother sub-
scribed to, and he received an early education in the art of shoe-
making by watching his mother make her own footwear, using
ribbon and lace.
“My goal is to always be a challenge to myself ” My shoes have
something other shoes don’t - personality.’ Perhaps this ex-
plains why Manolo Blahnik’s work has such a seductive power
and how, with a career spanning over 25 years, he has become
the world’s most famous footwear designer. Born in the Canary
Islands in 1943, Blahnik spent his childhood crafting tinfoil shoes
for the family’s cats. After studying languages and art in Geneva,
he moved to Paris in 1968 with the intention of becoming a set
designer. But on a trip to New York in 1970, Paloma Picasso took
him to meet Diana Vreeland, then editor-in-chief of American
Vogue, who insisted his talent lay in shoe design.
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