Manolo say,
London swing like pendulum do.
Stilettos are practically supporting characters on TV shows set in New York. Boots with a name too dirty to reproduce in print are all over Paris catwalks. But it is in London that must-have shoes are created.
The death and dying of fashion in the British capital is a favourite gossip-and-gore story for the glossy press. All the budding talent, it is said, is scooped up and shipped off to Paris and Milan postehaste.
But even as London Fashion Week, which opens on Sunday, continues to fight for oxygen in an industry overgrown with catwalk giants, the city’s shoe designers remain the stars of the show
Manolo Blahnik, the name most associated with glamorous feet, shoes all of Hollywood and a good deal of the world’s ladies who lunch, but he still turns out all the shoes from his London workshop.
Mmmm shoey. But London is more lonely, now.
“People say fashion has floundered here, but if you look at designers from some of the great houses, they are British. They get stolen and taken abroad,” said Tamara Mellon, owner of Jimmy Choo and, with Sandra Choi, its designer.
“It’s very difficult in the United Kingdom to get financing for luxury companies”, she said, whereas bankers in Paris and Italy ”know what luxury is”.
It may be “a bit of a handicap” to remain in London, but diehard native Mellon says she is sticking around.
Manolo is not leaving!
