Manolo Blahnik has a ”50s mentality” about fashion.
The shoe designer – a favourite of stars including Sarah Jessica Parker and Kylie Minogue – does not think women have to spend a huge amount of money to look good and prefers them to wear ”twin sets and tweed”.
He said: ”[Trends] manipulate women by making them feel they have to constantly spend money on different things to remain fashionable.
”This is ridiculous. I’d prefer to see women in twin sets and tweed. I have a very 50s kind of mentality when it comes to fashion.”
The Spanish creator – who opened his first shop in London in 1968 – admits his career has not always been easy, especially when as an inexperienced designer he forgot one key element of a shoe heel when he was asked to create a range for Ossie Clark.
He told the Wall Street Journal: ”I had been asked to make shoes for Ossie Clark’s show in the early 70s. I was so inexperienced that I didn’t put the steel in the heels of the shoes, which is required to support the shoe and the wearer. So the girls came out walking very strangely in these rubber, bendy high-heeled shoes I had made. I thought, ‘Oh dear god! This is the end of me.’
”But after the show, even David Hockney and Cecil Beaton said to me, ‘It was so interesting that the girls were moving in such a different way.’ ”