Manolo Blahnik Drawings
Manolo Blahnik
Thames and Hudson
2003
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| Manolo Blahnik Drawings |
"Architectural shoes are not new to me." (Manolo Blahnik)
Manolo Blahnik is in the best position to promote what he calls "the camber of making aspiration a reality" to those who wear his heels (and they are legion). Anna Wintour speaks for them all when she writes: "The truth is, I wear no other shoes except his; and I see from my daughter's incursions into my cupboard that the former crawler has found her feet, which is to say her Manolos." Manolo is not the only man who promotes it. I have come by my promotion of this architectural camber quite honestly, if not innocently. My de facto love of art cannot be understood without it, let alone the de jure basis for it. Like all things worth considering, it begins at the very beginning with my earliest childhood memory.
This memory consists in sound, not sight. I have no conceptual image that I can associate with this first memory. I have tried in vain over the years to access an earlier one. This aural memory is the limit of my mental analysis. This sound marks the beginning of my conscious life. It is an aural manifestation of my inner anima, a sound that is refined, brutal, exotic, archful, deviant, and ultimately joyful. Indeed, it is the kind of sound that is as graceful as it is irresistible. No wonder Nietzsche said what he did about the sounds of music.
I remember sitting at the end of a long hallway in my home when I was just two-years old (my second earliest childhood memory). I was busy playing with a toy. I looked up and saw my mother walking toward me. She was wearing a tightly fitting Dior New Look inspired black dress, black silk seamed stockings, and a pair of black stiletto heels (black is always the new black). She walked up to me, stopped, knelt down, and picked me up in her loving arms. At that moment I realized that her heels made that irresistable sound because when she stopped walking on the waxed hardwood floor, the sound gracefully disappeared into the silence. Eureka! At that precise moment both sight and sound became one in me. I discovered the stilettoed source of my earliest childhood memory. Ever since I made that realization I have been trying to understand its artistic import.
The maternal in Manolo is a force of nurture. This is the reason why he dedicates this 2003 portfolio of drawings to his mother. With this in mind, I can actively imagine young Manolo innocently walking into his mother's walk‐in closet. He sees rows upon rows of his mother's shoes, all neatly placed and displayed on mounted racks. He is mesmerized by them, so much so that he is afraid to even touch them ("Let's get to the love scene my friend," Donald Fagen sings, "which means look, maybe touch, but beyond that not too much."). Like the genius mathematician Ramanujan (who maintained that each prime number had a unique personality all its own), young Manolo too imagines each pair has a personality all their own. He closes the closet door, sits himself down in the middle of the room, and begins to become the myth that is Manolo.
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| Young Manolo Holding His Own |
Speaking of active imagination, we should never cut ourselves off from what Jung calls "the irrational fullness of life." I mention this because the people, the places, and the various things that have come into my orbit have only served to irrationally confirm my love for the visual and aural artistry of shoe design. Those of us who have read through treatises like Krafft‐Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, and laughed through novels like Nicholson's Footsucker, know just how much of one's sexual identity and sensibility can be tied into the sight and the sound of this aesthetic heeling power. But there is more to my story than meets the ear.
I once knew a woman who worked her way through university by owning and operating a private club. She was a student of mine when I was a professor at the University of Toronto. She came to see me often during my office hours because of a remark I made in a lecture about the relation between haute couture and sexual power. I made this remark in passing when discussing the function of sexuality as an "analytics of power" in relation to what Michel Foucault calls "Scientia Sexualis" in his multi‐volume work The History Of Sexuality. It was an extemporaneous remark (the very best kind).
This remark was the cataylist for a story she wanted to tell me about her line of work. Her job required her to dress the part, which included her shoes. For her the allure of the work had less to do with the sexual context she created for her clients (many of whom were powerful enough to require and desire feminine domination), and more to do with the sense of empowerment she experienced while doing it. Working her heels was part of the power trip.
When she mentioned this I was immediately reminded of something Manolo once accurately said (and artistically shows, through his beautiful designs): "When a woman puts on a pair of high heels, she changes." I did not say much in response to my student's disclosures (she only wanted my ear, not my advice - she was the mistress of her own domineering domain), but I certainly understood them. My former student knew that the change is an important one, artistically, existentially, and (in her case) professionally. As Anna Piaggi puts it: "Manolo speaks through his shoes. For him, the foot, the shoe, implies the whole nature of a person, and expresses a story." This change is double-sided. To the extent that a woman changes when she puts on high heels, to that extent others change when they witness her wearing them, and working them, to perfection.
Ruth La Ferla wrote a review in The New York Times Magazine back in 1991 in which she describes to perfection just what it means (and what is required) for a woman to wear a pair of heels. She wrote about the "coffee‐skinned Yasmeen Ghauri" whose "hard‐to‐get gaze was belied by the ball‐bearing swivel of her hips." There is an art to swivelling the ball. Some women are artists and swivel accordingly. Others are not and squander the chance to ball it, despite how hard they try. In the spirit of Fran Lebowitz (who once remarked: "When Toni Morrison said that you should write the book you want to read, she did not mean everyone"), I think it only right to assert that only artists of Yasmeen's model can powerfully move through space with Wintour's confidence and Coddington's grace, creating their own artistic orbit in the process.
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| Yasmeen Ghauri |
"In the fiction of Martin Amis," La Ferla goes on to write, "there are two kinds of model: the glamour girl propped invitingly against the bright sedan, whose demeanour, Amis writes, "proclaimed you could do what you liked with her"; and the fashion model, a more rarefied breed, whose demeanour "proclaimed she could do what she liked with you." Art does what it likes with those serious enough to let it change them. I am sure Queen Esther of old swivelled her ball precisely because she personified this seriousness generously, if not politically. Such a woman knows how to use her money maker in order to get things done (the Book of Esther in a nutshell). Personal power is a private prerequisite for a woman to make the stilettoed sound (in whatever fashion they choose).
Speaking of Esther (and Queens), Daphne Guinness is correct to point out that what made Alexander McQueen's fashion shows so unique was that they were aesthetic theatre, not just an avenue to sell a garment (despite the bottom line). They were "modern couture" as Manolo once said. Artists therefore understand why Carrie Bradshaw cries out in theatrical desperation "I've been robbed!" And artists therefore know why Warhol likened his post-Solanas shooting scars to sewed seams in a Dior dress. Is it any wonder, then, that someone as fashionable as The Material Girl chose 'Esther' as her Hebrew name when she went Kabbalistic? I think not: "Manolo Blahnik's shoes are as good as sex ... and they last longer." (Madonna)
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| Manolo Pumps On Marble Pedestal |
Helmut Newton once said that in his world "the women always win." The same is true in Manolo's world, precisely because everyone wins. In his world women and men alike acknowledge, appreciate, and aspire a reality where the architectural arch of artistic camber gets manifested with every step a woman makes. "My shoes are not fashion," Blahnik states, "they are gestures." His world is about the personal power that only an artistic gesture of the highest order can create. To be a "Manolo Girl" (as Veronica Webb puts it) is to understand that Manolo's heels are a metaphor for the existential heights we can achieve if we properly appropriate the idealistic power of art in our daily life (sidewalk as catwalk):
She shows what she likes,
She likes what she shows.
In deed, she knows
She is shocking
Exposing her stocking
While moving through space
Like a limber femme feline.
(How does she cat-walk that line?)
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| Helmut Newton The Women Always Win |
The gestures in Manolo Blahnik Drawings are a selective recreation of the value of aesthetic empowerment. They are a sculptural symbol of the unifying reality that art is synonymous with a life-well-lived (rightly displayed on a black marble pedestal). Part of Blahnik's power consists in breaking through biased barriers and knocking down conceptual columns that once covered and upheld mistaken ideas about style. One such mistaken idea is that style is as contingent as taste (which continues to change, as Sontag reminded us), whereas art is not. Instead, he demonstrates that style is as contingent as art because style is art. Gestured living is all about contingently surviving in style.
Like Charles Darwin before him, Manolo Blahnik is a man who knows how to dress, and how to evolve (survival of the fitted). But unlike Darwin, Manolo is a man who knows something about the power of creation. Alexandra Shulman is right: "If God had wanted us to wear flat shoes, He wouldn't have invented Manolo Blahnik."
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| Manolo Blahnik |
Coda
Through a series of circumstances beyond my control (and too numerous to narrate here), Manolo Blahnik was given this essay to read by his personal assistant. To show his appreciation for it, he was kind enough to send me his annual personalized Christmas card (shown below). He wrote: "Dear Rory: Thank you for your story. Manolo Blahnik." What a mensch. I mention this because his card inspired me to keep doing what I love. I wrote the essay as a personal tribute to one of my favourite artists, never expecting it to go beyond that. The lesson here is to know what you want, to trust your heart, and to follow your bliss. You never know what will come of it.
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| Front of Manolo Blahnik Christmas Card 2013 |
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| Back of Manolo Blahnik Christmas Card 2013 |
Sources
Alexander McQueen. Savage Beauty. Yale University Press, 2011.
Claire Anthony. Shoegasm: An Explosion Of Cutting Edge Shoe Design. Race Point Publishing, 2012.
Daphne Guinness. In Fashion, Daphne Guinness: Interviewed By Alex Fury. October 10, 2012.
Donald Fagan. "Century's End." Steely Dan Gold: Expanded Edition. Geffen, 1991.
Geoff Nicholson. Footsucker. The Overlook Press, 1995.
Daphne Guinness. In Fashion, Daphne Guinness: Interviewed By Alex Fury. October 10, 2012.
Donald Fagan. "Century's End." Steely Dan Gold: Expanded Edition. Geffen, 1991.
Geoff Nicholson. Footsucker. The Overlook Press, 1995.
Grace Coddington. Grace: A Memoir. Random House, 2012.
Helmut Newton. SUMO. TASCHEN, 2009.
Manolo Blahnik. Manolo Blahnik Drawings. Thames & Hudson, 2003.
Michael Foucault. The History Of Sexuality, Volume 1. Vintage, 1990.
Richard Krafft-Ebing. Psychopathia Sexualis. Nabu Press, 2010.
Robert Kanigel. The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life Of The Genius Ramanujan. Washington Square Press, 1992.
Ruth Le Ferla. "Fashion; Striking Poses." The New York Times Magazine. June 02, 1991.
Manolo Blahnik. Manolo Blahnik Drawings. Thames & Hudson, 2003.
Michael Foucault. The History Of Sexuality, Volume 1. Vintage, 1990.
Richard Krafft-Ebing. Psychopathia Sexualis. Nabu Press, 2010.
Robert Kanigel. The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life Of The Genius Ramanujan. Washington Square Press, 1992.
Ruth Le Ferla. "Fashion; Striking Poses." The New York Times Magazine. June 02, 1991.
Susan Sontag. "Fascinating Fascism." New York Review Of Books. February 06, 1975.
