manolo blahnik’s shoes became more popular

         manolo blahnik’s shoes became more popular than ever in the early twenty-first century. They appealed to an increasingly broad audience, in part because of their star billing on the television show Sex and the City. With production of “Manolos” limited to 10,000 to 15,000 pairs per month by four factories outside of Milan, the demand for these shoes exceeded the supply.Blahnik has toiled for a decade in the U.S., first with his own store in New York and more recently with shops-in-stores in Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, I. Magnin,chloe, Barneys and Ultimo in Chicago. These are in addition to his tiny flagship store in London and his franchised shop in Hong Kong. He’s been known by shoe cognoscenti as one of the most creative footwear designers of the last 20 years.

The December 2003 issue of Footwear News quoted Alice Rawsthorn, the director of London’s Design Museum, which had been the site of a recent manolo shoes retrospective: “Technically,chanel, aesthetically and conceptually, he is one of the most accomplished designers of our time in any field, and is undeniably the world’s most influential footwear designer” (Anniss, p. 16).
At a personal appearance at I. Magnin in Los Angeles early this fall, Manolo Blahnik was approached by a young couple who asked him to autograph a pair of his shoes for them.

But they didn’t want just one autograph. They wanted him to sign one shoe to each of them. “I asked the girl,chanel handbags, ‘but aren’t you going to wear them?’” manolo blahnik recounts, in his typically theatrical fashion. “‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘They’re too beautiful to wear. We’re going to take them home and treasure them.’”Manolo Blahnik, shoe artist — the couple’s reaction to Blahnik’s designs shows why 1992 has belonged to the designer in America and why he is Footwear News’ designer of the year.