Biography of Fashion Designer - Manolo Blahnik - Essay Example

The essay "Biography of Fashion Designer - Manolo Blahnik" discovers the Manolo Blahnik's biography. Together with Evangeline, his younger sister, they both underwent education at home since their family often travelled to Paris and Madrid. It was during those times when his interest in shoe-making started under the influence of his mother improvising and making of Catalan espadrilles from ribbons and laces. Blahnik enrolled for a politics and law major at the University of Geneva but later shifted to literature and architecture.

After graduating in 1965, Blahnik moved to Paris to study art at L’École des Beaux-Arts and L’École du Louvre while working at GO, a vintage clothing store. In 1968, he moved to London and enrolled at a language school to master the English language but spent most of his time watching films in the Leicester Square cinemas. To step up his career of becoming a stage set designer, Blahnik went to New York to present his portfolio of drawings and set designs to Diana Vreeland, then editor of US Vogue.

Vreeland looking at Blahnik’s designs exclaimed: “How amusing. Amusing. You can do accessories very well. Why don’t you do that? Go make shoes. Your shoes in these drawings are so amusing”, referring to a sketch of a fantastical shoe which crept up the ankle entwined with ivy and cherries. After that inspiring moment, Blahnik went back to London in 1972 and begun designing for Zapata, a boutique on Old church Street in Chelsea (Craven). He started designing men’s shoes.. Ossie Clark, a flashy fashion designer, was quick in noticing Blahnik’s talent and so requested for Blahnik’s designs for his next runway show.

Eventually, Blahnik’s shoes got popular for Vogue editors even for a vintage Hollywood star like Lauren Bacall. He was more inclined to learn the craft of shoe-making, and thus, searched for a manufacturer in Walthamstow, north east of London to perfect this skill. Thereafter, British Vogue made Blahnik as the first man ever to appear on its cover in 1974 (Design Museum). A year before being the cover of the famous magazine, Blahnik bought Zapata from its owner with the help of a ?2,000 loan.

He ran the business with his sister, Evangeline. The designer continued working with the big fashion icons like Jean Muir, Fiorucci and Ossie Clark. Slowly, he made his market in the US by creating a collection for Bloomingdales in 1978, opening his first store at Madison Avenue, New York in 1979, and designing shoes for Perry Ellis in 1980. Blahnik’s business took off in the US in the early 1980s when George Malkemus, a young copywriter, became his US business partner, leaving him and Evangeline taking charge of the business in Europe.

Blahnik’s fame became unstoppable as he was also designing shoes for Calvin Klein’s collections in 1984 (Design Museum). Years after, the designer’s creativity and hardships were recognized as he received a special award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) in 1987, Accessory Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council in 1990 and 1999, La Aguja de Oro (The Golden Needle) in Spain in 2001, and La Medalla de Oro en Merito en Las Bellas Artes by Juan Carlos I in 2002.

He was also honored with a retrospective exhibition of his drawings, memorabilia and