Manolo Blahnik has become America’s latest foot fetish. Once a secret shared by the fashion elite and ladies who lunch–he began making shoes for Vogue’s Diana Vreeland nearly 30 years ago–the London shoe designer now has a mass audience to go with his high-class one. Blahniks have been a part of such pop-culture phenomena as Jennifer Aniston’s wedding (she wore them) and Kathie Lee Gifford’s departure from morning TV (Joan Rivers gave her a $2,000 pair covered in rhinestones as a gift). This month a coffee-table book, “Manolo Blahnik,” by Colin McDowell, arrives in stores, while Manolo’s ultrafeminine high stiletto heels click up and down runways at New York’s shows.
To be sure, at $400 and up, Blahniks are still out of range for most women, but stores say their Blahnik business is exploding. Cynthia Marcus, vice president of ladies’ shoes at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, says she’s seen “nearly triple-digit” increases in Blahnik sales since last year. As she says to anyone who will listen, “If he wanted me to change the name to Neiman Blahnik, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” More and more women like Ligia Brickus of Boston are buying Blahniks for the first time. “It doesn’t matter if you’re overweight or too skinny, they look great on everybody.”
Part of this Manolo moment has to be attributed to fashion’s return to elegance. Industrial chic is out. Sexy and feminine is in. Now that the roaring economy has made glamour and luxury popular again–not to mention given people the money to afford them–younger designers like Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin are following in his pointy mules. But his is the name that equals sex. “Blahniks are the epitome of high heels, and the heel is the ultimate symbol of erotic femininity,” says Valerie Steele of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. Although Blahnik himself disputes the idea of his shoes as sex on sticks–“I’m not inclined to think about sex myself,” he says, “it’s never been my forte”–his fans praise the shoes’ elegance and power to allure. “They’re the closest thing you can get to being Grace Kelly,” says Susan Carroly, 41, who’s been collecting Blahniks for 15 years. But she admits that when it comes to moving around in four-inch heels the diameter of a thumbtack, “it helps to have a glass of champagne.”
And a good foot doctor. Dr. Suzanne Levine, a New York podiatrist, has seen about a 30 percent increase this year in cracked heels and stress fractures associated with high heels like Blahniks. But even she can’t resist them: she has 12 pairs, including a pair of pink alligator mules. “We all know, if you say ‘You can’t have chocolate cake or ice cream,’ people will have it anyway.” And while they might not be able to fit into the little black dress afterward, they can still wear the shoes.
