Manolo Blahnik CEO Kristina Blahnik Turning Her Eye to the West Coast
The shoe designer's niece hosted an L.A. lunch with Gillian Jacobs, Lily Rabe, "Barbie" tour stylist Andrew Mukamel, Jessica Paster, Jamie Mizrahi and more.
Fueled by a record year in 2022, with profit tripling, UK brand Manolo Blahnik is strengthening its foothold in the American market, specifically in Los Angeles.
On Thursday, chief executive officer Kristina Blahnik and president of the Americas Andrew Wright hosted a luncheon at the Chateau Marmont for Hollywood image makers, including stylist Andrew Mukamel, who tapped the brand for 30 pairs of custom pink shoes for Margo Robbie’s “Barbie” tour, stylists Jamie Mizrahi, Jessica Paster and Tara Swennen; actresses Lily Rabe, Akira Akbar and Gillian Jacobs; models Hilary Rhoda, Jessica Hart and more.
Held in the penthouse, the lunch featured a display of Blahnik’s fanciful footwear for spring, including Picasso-inspired, mask-like Harala red and yellow patent mules; green suede Florette flats with leafy ankle straps; and the Berola pumps embroidered with red silk coral branches. The room was also decorated with Blahnik’s famous sketches, which adorned linen napkins at each place setting on the lunch table outdoors.
“L.A. has been a city that I’ve been curious about for a long time. I came for the first time 10 years ago, and Manolo knows it very well from the ’60s and ’70s. We’re definitely turning our eye to the West Coast. We’d love to have a local store here at some point…And this lunch is about talking to a community people that I suppose we haven’t really had a chance to talk to so much the last 50 years,” she said of the stylists supporting the brand already, working through the New York office and with local PR agency IHPR.
“There are so many incredibly visionary people that operate and live here and work from here. And I think it’s important that we bring a little bit of our family energy into this part of the world to help people understand who we are because we are slightly different to most other brands. One, we are completely independent. Two, we’re completely family run. And we operate very much in a heartfelt family-orientated way. So we treat all of our team as family, all of our community we want to be family, and we basically want to open the doors to our home and add more family members.”
Plugging into the celebrity dressing machine is a goal, of course.
“Fashion pages are still important, but I think what’s happening when people are walking red, green, pink carpets is saying more about fashion than the printed page because it is a lot more independent. And we believe in independence,” she said. “We have so much gratitude for the stylists that already embrace who we are and what we stand for, comfort being a priority, especially if you’re having to stand many hours,” Blahnik said, calling out Mukamel in particular for his support.
The brand made about 30 pairs of custom shoes for Robbie, who ended up wearing about 23; her Manolos are also featured on the cover of the book “Barbie: The World Tour,” co-written by Mukamel and the actress.
Did the 2023 hit film impact sales like “Sex and the City” did in the late ’90s and early 2000s?
“I hope so, I think so but we didn’t make those shoes into a commercial proposition. We don’t believe in optimizing or utilizing every opportunity to just commercialize it. It was just a lovely magical project. It might have opened the talking point, but we don’t shout from the mountaintops saying ‘Oh, here we are on so-and-so.’ It’s more if someone is curious enough to go, ‘I like the look of that’ and then they go find it.”
Blahnik said she’s searching for retail space in both L.A. and Miami, but thinks those openings will not happen until next year.
Manolo Blahnik has 19 stores worldwide, including a new space just opened in Hong Kong. “Asia is a big focus for us this year after a trademark we reclaimed after 22 years in China, in 2022, and we want to finally be able to tell the story we’re telling here in China,” said the CEO, a big believer in physical stores.
“It’s not about a theatrical experience, but a beautiful experience, the right service with product in the right sizes, and the design unique to the location. Because they are meant to be a living room of shoes for you to come and have a cup of tea or champagne and just exhale for a moment where you’re treated like a member of family.”
Sipping Manolo margaritas and rose before lunch, guests mingled and swapped stories about their first Manolo memories. “I learned from my mother shopping when I was a child,” said Mukamel. “She shopped at the sample sales and would come home with huge shopping bags…and this is what excited me when I was younger.”
They’re great to work with “for all of my clients,” said the stylist, wearing a pair of Manolo Blahnik men’s beige suede Semanado sneakers. “Everything’s always exactly as you dream it if not better.”
“Sex and the City” introduced the line to so many people and they are very linked in my head,” said Jacobs. The actress chose to wear blue satin and crystal Lurumflat mules with a denim look by Veronica Beard “because I love comfort,” she laughed.
Stylist Jessica Paster recounted an important Manolo moment in her career, when she was styling Kim Basinger for the 1998 Golden Globes, where she won best supporting actress for “L.A. Confidential.”
Paster had just moved to L.A., was broke and working as a styling assistant. She’d saved her pennies to buy a pair of Manolos, which she wore everywhere. And when it came time to put a look together for Basinger, she used them as an example of what could be worn with the actress’ Fifties-style Amsale dress. Basinger was so taken, she gave her credit card to Paster to track down and buy the same pair.
“The beginning of what I knew about good taste was Manolo Blahnik,” said Paster, whose storytelling is legend.
Blahnik’s isn’t so bad, either.
“I grew up in a shoebox, genuinely in a shoe box,” she told guests over lunch. “When I was 8 years old, I watched by uncle and mother doing everything from selling the shoes in the shop to upstairs, doing all of our press and marketing and advertising, designing, doing the book keeping. It was just the two of them and one or two others, one who is still with us working as our house historian. They also unpacked the collection when it arrived from the factories. The truck would arrive outside and they had an 8-year-old child who needed to be doing something. So my mother would cut a mouse hole out of a cardboard box and there I’d play for the next two hours in the shoe crate.
“I’ve drawn them, I’ve unpacked, them, I’ve destroyed them, I’ve got a million stories, I’ve danced to ‘Thriller’ in red 11 1/2 cm heels in my school uniform, I’ve eaten window displays made out of Jelly Bellys…”
Blahnik learned and observed, then set up her own business as an architect and did that for 10 years before joining the family business full time 15 years ago.
“We’re completely independent, my mother owns 10 percent and my mother owns 90 percent,” she continued. “We’ve done this all without any loans, any investment for 54 years to be here today. And hopefully it will only be 55 years until we’re physically in L.A..”