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Today, after visiting The Art of the Shoe, the well-deserved exhibition about Manolo Blahnik that finally arrives in Spain, I remember those days I spent by his side, in his house in England, helping to organize his wonderful manolos.
I remember arriving in Bath and buying some white cotton new born size bodysuits at Mark and Spencer when Mark and Spencer had not yet arrived in Barcelona. I remember clouds of microscopic insects flying over cobblestone streets. I remember a river, an inhabited bridge. A splendid bougainvillea at the door of an English crescent. Having tea in a cream-colored kitchen in the basement of the house, in the purest Upstairs and Downstairs style. I remember Manolo eating bananas, offering me shortbread cookies, telling me that he barely slept, that he barely ate. I remember the man of Canarian origin, so British already, spraying insecticide, being scandalized to see me nearby and dispersing the spray cloud with his hands "Don't smell it, don't smell it!". It was spring and I was pregnant and Manolo begged me every now and then to lie down on the sofa in his living room. "What are you doing standing? Lie down and rest! Rest!" I remember him suggesting names for my future twins, Urraca, Benito, Úrsula. "Ah, how wonderful it would be to be called Severo." I remember his tireless talking, his frantic jumping from one topic to another, his rush of references, what he had lived mixed with what he had read and seen in the cinema: San Juan de la Cruz, Alain Delon, Paloma Picasso, his beloved mother in Santa Cruz de La Palma waiting for fashion magazines to cross the Atlantic. His last encounter with a Jessika Parker a few days before giving birth, in which she proudly and very pregnant showed him the stilettos she was wearing and Manolo started screaming in the middle of a crowded photocall: "Ah, crazy, you're crazy, take them off right now or you're going to kill yourself!" I remember hearing him say that Kate Moss was the daughter he would have liked to have.
What a privilege it was for me to be there. Observing the development of what was to be his first major exhibition in Spain. Perhaps the most complete ever seen. By Manolo's express wish, Silvia Alexandrovich was to be the curator, and Oscar Tusquets Blanca the exhibition designer. The shoes were grouped by themes written by hand on different sheets: Africa, El Escorial, Versailles, the punky, the elves, Russia. Zurbarán. Silvia spoke, suggested, more themes appeared, they were divided into sub-themes, and Manolo applauded them, nuanced them, became excited, "Ah, Spain, ah, Balenciaga, ah, Galdós." And more and more shoes arrived, no one knew quite from where, and they began to invade the rooms, the fireplace mantel, the divan, the carpets, the apple-green velvet poufs. Architectural ankle boots, Greek sandals, invisible footwear with metallic soles, slippers for queens, for ephebes, stilettos for mermaids and Mata Haris, with feathers, pompoms, corals, flowers. The entire universe of the great Blahnik paraded before my eyes: his obsessions, his delicacy, his culture, his exquisite craftsmanship.
I remember him restless. With a modesty that hinted that all of it mattered little to him. Sometimes he would pick up one of the designs, brandish it before my nose and say that it was nothing, a stupid, ridiculous, horrifying little shoe, and he would drop it. And at that moment he seemed lost. As if he wanted to flee from that army of singular shoes, each one of them deserving of a proper name, an army that was imposing itself before us like a living force, like a separate entity, and for which the designer was solely responsible. And Manolo murmured "all this is a horror, an absurdity." I remember him constantly getting distracted, escaping, with his objects, with the things that populated his house, like a plaster foot with the second toe longer and he would interrupt us and say: "Look at this toe, what a toe, aaahh Phidias, what a marvel, superb, superb." Or he would grab a DVD from among the thousands of DVDs that crammed an infinite shelf, "Ahh, look! Vittorio de Sica, Sophia Loren playing a fishmonger, the pescivendola, ah, Loren, I adore her, I love her, Silvia, where are you?, and that little shoe I made thinking of Sophia the fishmonger? Where is it? Find it! Silvia, write it down! Write down another theme!
I remember an inexhaustible Manolo. Uncontrollable. A bustling, hyperactive, out-of-the-ordinary mind. A child. A dandy. A madman. A creator.
There was a change of government and the exhibition was canceled. It would have been wonderful to bring it to fruition, to be able to spend more time with Manolo and Silvia and collect more memories. Today, thirteen years later, I visit the exhibition that has finally been made, without Oscar, without Silvia Alexandrovich, without Sofía the pescivendola, without Luis García Berlanga still eager to shoot a short film specifically for Blahnik about the stiletto heel. But there is an exhibition. Thanks to Vogue magazine, the ministry, the Museum of Decorative Arts, Manolo Blahnik finally has his exhibition in Spain. How glad I am.
What a privilege to remember Manolo.