“The pictures were always printed this small in the magazines,”
he says, pinching his white-gloved fingers together. “I was never
a real photographer.” Manolo’s photos were a precursor to
Instagram: candid snapshots of the very famous, very fabulous
people with whom he surrounded himself. “Everything in my
life has been spontaneous,” he quips. “I’ve never thought too
much about it.” Having grown up on a diet of fashion magazines,
he still remembers stumbling across the pages of Vogue that
first encouraged him to get behind the camera. “It was David
Bailey’s pictures of Jean Shrimpton; I was absolutely mesmerised.”
There are plenty of icons in Manolo’s photographic portfolio,
although many of the original prints were stolen some years
ago. He photographed Marisa Berenson as Lady Lyndon;
Bryan Ferry lounging at home; Bianca Jagger onLong before Manolo Blahnik’s name became synonymous
with stilettos, he was a photographer about town, capturing
the beautiful people in the Swinging London so perfectly
depicted in Blow-Up (the set of which he happened to
accidentally stroll on to, and consequently ended up in the
film as an extra). Blahnik has always been a creative polymath- illustrating, photographing, scrapbooking, antiquing,
modelling (he is one of the few men ever to have appeared
on the cover of British Vogue, in 1974) – and he even had a
brief stint at the United Nations at the behest of his parents.
Photography, he insists, despite being published in Andy
Warhol’s Interview and Vogue Italia, was never his true calling. > 328
MANOLO BLAHNIK
Photographer282LORRAINE WEARS SHIRT AND SKIRT, BOTH PRADA. SHOES, MANOLO BLAHNIK. EARRINGS, MERCEDES SALAZAR, AT KOIBIRD.COM09-19-Well-FirstJob.indd 282 09/07/2019 10:21