Manolo Blahnik Quotations

About half my designs are controlled fantasy, 15 percent are total madness and the rest are bread-and-butter designs.

People walk differently in high heels. Your body sways to a different kind of tempo.

Men tell me that I've saved their marriages. It costs them a fortune in shoes, but it's cheaper than a divorce. So I'm still useful, you see.

You put high heels on and you change.

Everything is global now. It's not London, it's not Spain, it's not Italy - everything is everywhere. So you have to be everywhere, I guess.

I always love China, especially the old China.

My shoes are special shoes for discerning feet.

I put everything I think is sexy into my shoes.

If I was a woman, I would be dressed in the same thing for a month and just change my hat and gloves. Maybe my shoes too; yes, I see what you mean but, really, it's jewels that change an outfit.

A lot of things trigger my inspiration. It can be the most banal things.

Paris is paramount for fashion, always was - always will be.

I never thought that I would sell to young people, but now girls who are 14 and 15 buy my shoes.

I think of each new season as an evolution, not a change in style.

I'm very painful to deal with when I create a shoe.

I don't know why my shoes are so popular - I am always surprised and mystified by it.

The greatest shoemaker in England for many, many decades; he used to be the royal shoe-maker for the Queen Mother. This is where I learnt my trade.

What is fashion? It's discipline. Discipline and a credo to do only the best, down to the smallest detail.

I am not a movie star or a football player, I just do my thing.

Really, the '70s and '80s were a blur.

I do think one should have clean feet.

I like women with style to wear my shoes.

I'm like an old vampire, so it's important to talk to young people.

My whole life has been a huge mistake, but what a divine mistake - doing something that I adore.

My mother is incredible. I mean, still is today.

My mother has an incredible rigidity, which is very Catholic.

I think I am one of the smallest surviving brands.

Most of the people nowadays send their things by internet. But I cannot work that way. I like to do it myself.

Some people just use beautiful things to just shop or to have a tribal feeling - 'Oh, blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Hermes; blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Saint Laurent; blah-blah blah' - because it's like a need, a tribe, recognition: 'Ahh, my Rolex.' But I run away from anything which is too recognizable - it's my nature.

slovenly and outwardly repulsive. But at the same time, is there not something magnetic?

In London I feel free; nobody bothers anyone and everyone is free to express themselves.

I just don't get death at all. Yes, it's there. But I don't get it.

I do and re-do things that I used to do in a flash, because I want to be more perfectionist about these things. Maybe it sounds pompous and pretentious, but that's the way I feel.

The gimmicky thing I'm not very keen on.

I wish I was making shoes instead of reading or watching movies, which is what I do in my free time.

] I'm loyal to my thoughts, to my friends. This is what I really like the best. Loyalty. Sounds goody-goody. Maybe that's not the one you wanted.

I'm not very nostalgic, you see. I just don't think anybody has that kind of thing anymore. By culture, by breeding, by whatever, it's not there. The kids today-what the hell are they going to be? I like young people - yes, I do. But when I talk to people at the schools, and they say, "I saw you on the Twit," I don't even know what they are talking about.

But it is hard to resist the feeling that 70th was some kind of golden age.

You'd see extraordinary-looking people around in the '70s. It was so exciting! You'd have mad people, like Gerlinde [Kostiff] riding around on her bicycle with a huge hat. Everybody was doing things. I don't have any bad memories of that period.

You realize how much fun we did have, with no money at all. We'd stay in peoples' homes in Tangiers. When you're young, you invite yourself.

Peter Hinwood found all these old pictures - Polaroids - and when I saw them, I just didn't believe that the person in them was connected with me. I was in a hotel room with one of those front-and-back mirrors, and I thought, Who the hell is that? I used to be thin as a rake. I used to have the nice-shaped pecs. It's sad. No, it's not sad, it's the reality, and I've accepted this now.

I don't think about myself very much.

I don't even know Amanda Seyfried or whatever - they're all the same!

I watched L'eclisse [1962] with Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. Changed my world. What a glamorous and modern film. This is what a genius is - the thing of a genius. The dresses, the tiny heels, the Cardin look, the boys dressed up as Italian gigolos - it was divine, very modern. [ Michelangelo] Antonioni, I loved and I realized: how modern.

David Lynch is démodé now, if you look at his films. I looked at them the other weekend.

I forget about the diseases that I have. I don't want to know.

I'm an old bag - I like old thing.

That kind of woman who used to be there at the time is not here any longer. In 10 years, people disappear. But I fantasize still about those kinds of women, and that kind of life that doesn't really exist any longer.

When somebody wants to work and believes in something, it doesn't matter if you're well known or rich or whatever it is.

I don't like very young women very much. Never did.

I think Lucy Ferry, now Birley, is absolutely beautiful. She's a modern girl, but she moves beautifully. Amanda [Harlech] moves beautifully when she's not working. All those English leftover society girls.

I thought Victoria Beckham was going to be one of those pop girls, but she's absolutely the complete opposite. She's a working girl. She knows what she wants. And when she doesn't know, she really prepares herself. I love this working type of women. And she's a girl from - I don't even know where she's from.

I never watched those Spice Girls. I didn't enjoy that at all. So I didn't know Victoria Beckham well. But she came out with this pretty boy, got married, and the boy got more tattoos and more tattoos. And then I met her a few times, and we started work, and something happened. You know, she wanted it. She loves what she's doing.

Passion is passion. It's a sort of madness and possession of what you do or what you think. This is the difference of life: passion and commerce, which most of the people know as "P.C." But people have just got "C" now instead of "P."

I adore Jean-Louis Trintignant - even at 100 years old he's fabulous.

I saw these girls like Sherilyn Fenn and Lara Flynn Boyle that should be working now instead of these anonymous girls. They're all the same.

I like the new shoe designers. Not all of them - there are really bad ones too. But I go to the colleges with these kids for lectures, as an honorary professor or whatever, and this Chinese girl I like very much who I give the award to says to me, "You don't know how much you inspired me to do shoes." And I'm glad that I convey that kind of desire to people when they see my bloody shoes.

You get two weeks after you do a shoe where you can test whether it's good or not - if you're going to like it in 20 years. Then I know that it's going to be my shoe for a long time. That doesn't happen very often, but it happens.

I'm loyal to my friends, but I have so few now.I force myself to see people when they're here. Or when I'm here. I don't live in England that much now in the sense that I spend time in factories. I'm such a factory man now. This is really what I enjoy doing.

I do enjoy my own company. I cannot imagine anybody entertaining me more than I do. If it sounds selfish, I don't care. I made it a religion almost.

The only way I can cope with me and my environment is to have this kind of wall around me. I'm exhausting myself.

These are very dainty and superrefined, but really vile.

Remain dignified, dress well, be good to other people and you’ll be fine.

The only people that come to my mind in the last years are Lee McQueen and John Galliano. Truly, truly . . . How do I say? Full of ideas. Full of the smell. They just had this incredible passion for what they did.

I don't belong to anyone.

I eat a lot of chocolate.

I get more tired by travelling than anything.

I couldn't care less about business.

I'm relating to a period that doesn't exist anymore.

I am insecure. Everyone's insecure.

I was a young man, and this is the kind of London it was, but so many people are just not here anymore. Not even Tina [Chow], who was to me absolutely the most important girl of the time. Tina was absolutely the chicest thing, the way she kept herself, the way she moved. You're born like that - you cannot acquire it. All those upper-class girls, people like Catherine Tennant, they used to be there in Chelsea, sitting on the couch. Now Chelsea is full of Russians.

I hate these platforms that are all over the place today; they are all about grabbing attention. They are suburban! I never do a platform. Well, I did, in the 1970s, but that was a bad experience.

Maintenance is terribly important.

If I look back I feel frightened, not happy, because my life is a bit of a mystery to me.

It was a different social structure. I'd go to [David] Bailey's for dinner at 10:30. There were always girls there and a house full of . . . I don't know, anybody. Cecil Beaton, Diana Cooper . . . And there I am sitting down with these creatures of the 20th century, and it was normal to us.

Trends don't interest me.

I saw this vision with a beautiful plastic bag in Kensington High Street, ... and then you didn't see the face because he had this blond thing [indicating a sweeping fringe across his face] that was, you know, too much!

I only saw one collection of Victoria Beckham, and I thought it was very much like Pierre Cardin or Marcel Rochas dresses. She's thought about it, and she knows what she wants. And people buy it, so that means she works. She has this incredible will power to do something that she likes to do. And I love that. I respect that.

Women are wearing tight and sexy clothes again. It is the body-conscious mentality, and women are revealing every bulge.

I don't consider myself a fashion designer.

I really connect with Victoria Beckham's desire to do something that she wants to do. Of the girls we've been talking about, she's one of the few that has this incredible sort of "I want to do it, and I want to do it well."

The most tragic moment of my life was the first show I ever designed for. I had been asked to make shoes for Ossie Clark's show in the early '70s. I was so inexperienced that I didn't put the steel in the heels of the shoes, which is required to support the shoe and the wearer. So the girls came out walking very strangely in these rubber, bendy high-heeled shoes I had made. I thought 'Oh dear god! This is the end of me.' But after the show, even David Hockney and Cecil Beaton said to me 'It was so interesting that the girls were moving in such a different way.'

I didn't need it [formal training], because I've got the best taste in the world.

It was so interesting that the girls were moving in such a different way.

Alas, passion is conducive to certain other things because when you have too much passion and you have too much work, you possibly end up having black holes. The danger is too much passion.

The greatest luxury is being free.

Some people just use beautiful things to just shop or to have a tribal feeling - 'Oh, blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Hermes; blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Saint Laurent; blah-blah blah' - because it's like a need, a tribe, recognition: 'Ahh, my Rolex.' But I run away from anything which is too recognizable - it's my nature.

I'm totally twisted. Instead of, "Oh god, I don't have platforms - they won't like me," I was much more, "I'm doing what I'm doing, and if you don't want to buy it, then don't buy, but that's just what I'm gonna do." It gave me strength. It worked for me.

I don't even think about the word. But I do have certain things where I just go, "Aaaaahhh," irritatingly boring and insistent because I want it to look that way and I can do it - I don't even know if you'd call it passion or obsession. Obsession, possibly, but I really love what I do.

I've never been tempted to do these hideous furniture shoes.

I'm always kind of contradictory to what people want and what's selling. But maybe I should care now because I have two or three more outlets. I have to be more adaptable color-wise to what people want. It's usually just black and pink, and that's it.

When I was out of favor and people didn't want that type of boot, flats, or high heels with the elegant, dainty things, it gave me much more energy.

I never wanted to be the most famous, the most beautiful, the most extravagant.

It's the only thing I really enjoy - so fresh, even now that I'm doing the new sampling. I'm dying to go to the factory, which is like nobody's idea of fun. But it's mine.

It's the only thing I get inspired by! I get inspired by dreams. Who cares about the rest?

The imprint of Miss Hepburn is absolutely, totally present. Like it or not, she will be the most important look of the twentieth century.

I'm going to do what I do, even more exaggerated. This is my attitude always. I don't betray myself at all.

When I was a boy I remember the women, how they dressed, how they behaved, what was important to them at the time. Like Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat.

I love exaggerated, and I love eccentric, but you must be comfortable. Otherwise it is nonsense. There is nothing charming about a woman who cannot walk in her shoes.

Shoes are the quickest way for women to achieve instant metamorphosis.

I'm a great observer of delicate situations and women. I really like that bygone type of movement, and for a long time I had been looking for it.