Q&a / Kristina Blahnik is building on uncle Manolo Blahnik’s legacy: the second-gen CEO talks growing up ‘in a shoebox’, why the brand won’t do sneakers, and the coming ultra-glam ‘baroque renaissance’
- Designer Manolo Blahnik’s niece left a career in architecture to lead the iconic shoe brand in 2009 – here she tells Style about storytelling, and the 30th anniversary of Campari, the Mary Jane made famous in Sex and the City
- A presence in Hong Kong since the 90s, Manolo Blahnik opened just opened a new boutique in Lee Gardens One – commemorated by an exclusive Pitita shoe – with a second address coming soon to Pacific Place
Kristina Blahnik, CEO of iconic footwear brand Manolo Blahnik and the eponymous designer’s niece, jokes about having a 500-year plan. But a sit-down with the exec suggests there’s truth in the jest.
“It’s been 15 years since I officially stepped into the role, but I’ve been lingering around since I was six years old,” Blahnik tells Style, while perched in the business’ spanking-new London headquarters, located a stone’s throw away from her uncle’s design studio. As we speak, the 81-year-old is working on an upcoming collection; his niece has also grown accustomed to thinking well into the future.
Blahnik is doubling down on direct-to-consumer channels and balancing the company’s global footprint, particularly in Asia. “This and next year we’re very much turning our heads to the East,” she declares. Founded in London in 1970, the brand (which previously had a boutique in the Elements mall in Kowloon) just unveiled a new stand-alone boutique in Hong Kong’s Lee Gardens One in March: within the year, a second store is promised in Pacific Place.
I do believe come 2025, we’re going to see a baroque renaissance – it’s going to be floral prints and pom-poms, pearls and diamonds. I’m hoping for more is more
“In Asia, Hong Kong was where it all began for us in the 1990s, and it feels like a home. We needed to put our own arms around it in a direct way,” she says.
Read on for more on of the former architect’s path into the family business, and favourite pairs from her 100-pair shoe collection.
When did you know you wanted to take the reins at the brand?
I grew up in a shoebox, but I was passionate about making my own mark, which I did through architecture. It was in my mid-thirties when things collided … it was a big bang, where I [realised I] needed to understand what this is to me.
My uncle and mother entrusted me with a review of [the business] and it grew from there. I look back and we’ve come such a long way – in this building alone are 120 people. But none of it felt like a revolution, it was all a natural progression.
I brought skills from architecture, like the ability to draw what the future will look like. My first full day in the family business was flying Manolo’s drawings to the factory and developing the spring/summer 2010 collection. I knew if I could build a building, I could probably build a shoe. It was a baptism by fire, but I loved it.
