Manolo Blahnik on His Favorite Classic Films and Handling Mental Health During Quarantine
The legendary shoe designer Manolo Blahnik has always had many creative outlets which have served as a constant source of inspiration throughout his 50-year design career. As a revered creative, Blahnik is using his platform in order to provide those same creative outlets as mental health resources, and share creative inspiration to his fans and consumers alike as many of us sit at home for days on end due to coronavirus.
Today the designer launched a new project in partnership with the UK Mental Health Foundation, an organization Blahnik has chosen to support and donate to over the years, called the Smile Initiative. It aims to use resources and mental health management tips from the organization, and turn them into tangible at-home activities you can use. Today Blahnik releases The Art of Colouring on his website. You can download original sketches of his classic (and some of his personal favorite) shoe designs, and color them in yourself. Coloring, though it may sound elementary, is credited to help relax the fear center of the brain and reduce anxiety, improve sleep and focus, as well as motor skills and vision, and overall a great dose of escapism from your daily (sometimes hourly) news feeds.
Also greatly inspired by film, Blahnik talked to L'Officiel USA about how his favorite movies were a major source of creativity for his designs over the years. Specifically, as a fan of period pieces, these films not only informed his personal creative process, but provided a sense of mental transportation to a world seemingly far away. A feeling that most of us movie-buffs can no doubt relate to. Below, Blahnik shares his all-time favorite classic films and what each one means to him.
DEATH INSURANCE
By Billy Wilder, released in 1944
Barbara Stanwyck plays the role of a provocative housewife who seduces an insurance salesman played by Fred MacMurray in a murderous fraud scheme in which she murders her husband to receive an insurance payment, triggering the suspicion of an investigator.
"I love all the films with Barbara Stanwyck. Her performance is incredible in Double Indemnity ... And the images are superb."
LA POSSEDEE
By Curtis Bernhardt, released in 1947
Joan Crawford plays the role of a mentally ill woman admitted to a psychiatric ward, reveals her complex story about how she ended up there. A dramatic story of a woman's obsession with her ex-lover.
EVE
By Joseph L. Mankiewicz, released in 1950
Bette Davis, a respected Broadway mega-star, hires the ambitious young fan "Eve" played by Anne Baxter as her personal assistant. But it seems that Eve has a devious and accomplice plan to overcome the big star and steal her life.
"Bette Davis is simply spectacular."
THE FUREUR DE VIVRE
By Nicholas Ray, released in 1955
A film depicting emotional teenagers, the villain Jim Stark, played by James Dean, settles in a new city to wipe his past clean. However, being the new kid in the neighborhood and falling in love with Judy (played by Natalie Wood) who is the current neighborhood tough guy's girlfriend, is causing him serious problems.
"What a wonderful film, James Dean is an icon, and this jacket: I had the same in red leather!"
AND GOD CREATED THE WOMAN
By Roger Vadim, released in 1956
Brigitte Bardot plays the role of a young woman sexually liberated in St Tropez; Married but still craving freedom by her own definition, her naive husband tries to keep her while she romances with a trio of men.
"Brigitte Bardot has always been a huge source of inspiration for me through her beauty and her acting, so elegant, feminine and beautiful."
CHEETAH
De Luchino Visconti, released in 1963
The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and his social class in the midst of the social upheavals in Sicily in the 1860s. With Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale.
“Visconti represents the quintessence of European visual culture. All his films are the vision of an artist captivated by beauty and sublimated in all its forms. The leopard is so beautifully made. "
