A mile in Manolo Blahnik’s footwear is not any informal stroll—it will probably resemble a lonely campaign in opposition to vulgarity. “All the pieces is dangerous in all places,” lamented Blahnik, the éminence grise of shoe design, now 80, on a current afternoon. He was calling from considered one of his houses, an hour outdoors of London, bemoaning the decline of style and mind. “The platform shoe is evil—ghastly,” he sniffed. “Typically I really feel like I’m probably not part of the world.”

Happily for girls who’re, Blahnik, the self-styled “borderless shoemaker” born within the Canary Islands to a Czech father and a Spanish mom, has cast his personal opposite path and continues to search out a lot to get enthusiastic about. “Why not?” he asks. “I’m all the time trying to the long run. Possibly tomorrow is best.” A pioneer whose namesake model has turn into a byword for aspiration, Blahnik, for all his numerous high-heeled creations, might be greatest remembered for a buckled mule he designed for the Isaac Mizrahi spring 1991 assortment. It was based mostly on the collars and cuffs worn by the Pilgrims—or, as Blahnik refers to them, “the Mayflower folks.”

The Maysale, because the shoe (initially known as Salem) is thought, stays as stylish as its creator. “Each 5 years or so, we revive it,” says Blahnik. “It sells out each time.”

Not surprisingly, a listing of stars lengthy sufficient to rival the Hollywood Stroll of Fame has worn the Maysale. Within the Nineties, Linda Evangelista ordered it in a variety of hues (presumably to match her ever-changing hair shade on the time); Madonna famously wore a pair for her red-carpet turns on the Cannes Movie Competition in 1991. Extra lately, everybody from Mary-Kate Olsen to Rihanna has given relevance to new permutations, which embody slingback and closed-pump variations.

In keeping with Blahnik, the shoe’s nods to the historical past of American adornment are on the coronary heart of its enchantment. “These historic codes are very reassuring, now greater than ever,” he says. “It’s very laborious to create glamour out of at the moment’s company world.”

With out lacking a beat, he gives one other potential purpose for the shoe’s attract: The Maysale, he says, has all the time reminded him not solely of Pilgrims however of late-Nineteenth-century Milanese prostitutes. “There’s a scene in Bolognini’s La Viaccia with Claudia Cardinale reverse Jean-Paul Belmondo,” he explains. “She is in a bed room and is clearly a prostitute, and he or she simply flicks the footwear off to do the factor. So, sure, there’s a conservative aspect to the design, but in addition that freedom. I like the combo.”

It’s the identical dance between restraint and daring that pulls him to the cheongsam. “It makes me consider Wong Kar-wai and these attractive ladies in clothes that go as much as the neck, very conventional, however then with a slit proper up the leg,” he explains. He additionally believes that’s an apt method to describe himself. “A superb buddy of mine all the time says I’ve the potential to be vile, however then in some way I do know when to place the brakes on,” he says. “I believe it’s fairly correct.”