Straps, Buckles and Beads on the Heels of a Big Success
He prefers to see satin shoes and blue jeans for weekends, mules and bare feet for the office, jeweled sandals for the city streets.
These and other unconventional ideas helped earn shoe designer Manolo Blahnik his second fashion Oscar--the Council of Fashion Designers of America award--last week in New York. And when word got out he would spend a day at Neiman Marcus, Beverly Hills, the shoe salon was overrun with women.
Spring highlights included fuchsia satin sandals fringed with black beads, apricot suede mules with pilgrim buckles and pale-blue sling backs with pompons on the toes.
As always, the collection is equipped with more curves, cutouts and overpass straps than a freeway interchange. And it reveals more about the sensual world of insteps, ankles and arches than anyone ever dared imagine.
“To trigger desire,” he said of the motive behind his designs.
“To break all the rules,” he said of his intentions as a designer.
Among his latest rule-breakers:
* Satin for day or night. Satin was once considered right for winter evenings only.
* Suede for the same times. It was once limited to winter days.
* Bare-back slip-ons for the office. “To be comfortable,” Blahnik explained, “wear mules and kick them off under the desk.” Where that is unacceptable, he said, try mules and silk stockings.
* Vibrant shoes for vibrant clothes.
After several collections filled with very high heels, his focus has shifted to very low, narrow, hourglass shapes. He said it took him five years to get them right. “You need a balance between sex appeal and elegance.”
If his attitudes seem unconventional, consider his sources. He gets design ideas from the operatic films of Italy’s Luchino Visconti, the Proustian novels of Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz and the pyramid geometrics of Japan’s Arata Isozaki, designer of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
The shoes are hand-finished in Italy and many styles are first seen on New York designer runways, worn as accessories to spring and fall collections by Bill Blass, Isaac Mizrahi and others.
The prices are formidable, from about $200 to $400. Which makes it all the more appealing to follow Blahnik’s advice: Wear any of his styles anywhere, day or night.
