MANOLO BLAHNIK is a gentleman. There's no other word for it. There's something charmingly, reassuringly old school about the way he deferentially refers to everyone as 'Mr' or 'Mrs', never using their first name. There's a gentility and elegance to his tone and manner that so many in the fast-moving world of fashion lack. But then again, the 65-year-old Mr Blahnik, as his staff call him, has never been one to indulge in the fripperies of throwaway fashion fads.
'For the past few years, what I have done has totally gone against fashion, with everyone making hideous platforms, making vile heels just because they want to be different,' he says. 'I hate that attitude.' Blahnik's style is more classic, more timeless. The ebb and flow of seasons and trends mean nothing to him in his pursuit of providing exquisite footwear for the world's most beautiful and fashion-literate women.
It wasn't always like this: as a child growing up in the Canary Islands, a career at the United Nations beckoned. 'It was a complete accident that I became a shoe-maker. When I was at school my uncle was a director at the United Nations in Geneva and every summer I worked there,' he says with a theatrical sigh. 'I couldn't bear it. It was so booooring. I felt so trapped in that kind of life.' Fortunately, a meeting with fashion grande dame Diana Vreeland, the formidable former editor of Harper's Bazaar and American Vogue, changed all that.
Fleeing the confines of the UN, Blahnik enveloped himself in the fervent creativity of Paris and London in the 1960s and 70s before travelling to New York to explore the possibility of becoming a set designer. A friend set up a meeting with the aforementioned uber-editor, known for her eccentricity and razor-sharp tongue.
'She was terrifying!' he laughs.
'I was dressed in a gingham suit and painful Victorian shoes that I found in Portobello Market. I looked like a tablecloth. But she looked at my sketches and stared shouting, 'Wonderful! Wonderful! Do shoes, young man!