Who are these dreadful women?” Manolo Blahnik screams in horror as he brandishes the latest edition of a smart society magazine. An assistant points out kindly that they are four of Hollywood’s top female stars. Looking pained, Blahnik turns away muttering “Dreadful, dreadful”, before adding, with a roll of his eyes heavenwards: “I’m totally confused. I don’t even know what taste is any more. Frankly, I can’t bear to buy magazines. I just get so upset.”

It’s rubbish, of course. Blahnik isn’t just a renowned shoemaker, who single-handedly invented the shoe as a fashion item in its own right. He is the most internationally savvy designer ever produced by London, totally attuned to the latest fashion nuances from around the globe, which he frequently crisscrosses. And despite his protestations, he doesn’t miss anything that is going on in fashion.

Maybe that’s why he always seems in a fluster, like the White Rabbit, desperately sighing, “I’m late, I’m late”, although he rarely is. He is far too disciplined for that. Now aged 64, not entirely slim, white hair rigidly pomaded into place – “I couldn’t possibly be seen without my glue” – elegantly groomed and tailored, Blahnik never stops working. Shoes are not just what he designs, they are his entire life.

The process starts with drawings, a few deft strokes of his Chinese brush, in the tranquillity of his home in Bath. Blahnik lives in a perfect Georgian terrace, which is furnished like an opera set by Zeffirelli, Visconti or any of the other Italian film-makers he adores (so much so that he watches their films compulsively until the small hours in an attempt to overcome his chronic insomnia).

As he draws, he gives each shoe a name, a nationality and a personality. Often bourgeois, sometimes fat, frequently from north Africa, the woman whose personality inhabits each shoe in his imagination is as far from the vapid prettiness of most modern fashion models as it is possible to get.

After the drawing, the wooden last is carved, something that occupies Blahnik for weeks. He then moves to Italy and works with the artisans in his three small factories. He makes examples of each style, explaining all the intricacies and difficulties to the workers himself. The result is a true shoemaker’s shoe in the tradition of his hero, the 1950s French designer Roger Vivier.

It’s continuous hard work, which leaves Blahnik only a limited time to indulge his hobby of enjoying ill health. Over the years, doctors, osteopaths and a variety of other specialists have made a comfortable living out of his back, which causes him a lot of pain but also brings pleasure. “I adore talking about my medical situation,” he exclaims happily, recalling with zest the time last year when he had to be carried to hospital on a stretcher. He smiles at the drama of it all. “I love things like that,” he says with a twinkle.

And the shoes themselves? “Better than sex,” according to Madonna. Lustfully name-checked in virtually every episode of Sex and the City, they are also the only shoes ever to grace the patrician feet of Anna Wintour. No wonder women even half-interested in fashion want a pair of Manolos. And, of course, they were the footwear of choice of the Princess of Wales. For her, Blahnik would close the shop so she could come and sit on the floor next to the designer and indulge her own personal shoe fantasy. She always paid in full, with a cheque signed by her then husband, the Prince of Wales.

Blahnik’s shoes continue to win high-profile fans: Victoria Beckham is a devotee. “We often meet in airports. And she’s very sweet – not the virago she is portrayed as at all.”

As you might guess, the heavy shoes of recent seasons do not meet with Blahnik’s approval. “They don’t even look like shoes,” he screams. “It’s like talking in Chinese. I don’t understand them at all. The past few years have been aesthetic hell for me. Even Daphne Guinness has made herself look ridiculous in monstrous shoes. It’s because designers have forgotten about the importance of the harmony of extremes.”

It is comments like this that have made the shoemaker so loved and revered, as much today as when he first started out with Ossie Clark, Vivienne Westwood and Calvin Klein, and with a long line of designers – from John Galliano to Christopher Kane – ever since. Blahnik knows what fashion is about and, at the Style event at the end of this month, I shall be asking him to tell it like it is.

An evening with Manolo Blahnik: The Sunday Times Style lecture

An evening with Manolo Blahnik will be held at the London College of Fashion at 6.30pm on Thursday, February 28. Tickets cost £20. To book, please call 0870 842 2242 or click here.

Please note there will be a £2.50 booking fee

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