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Kristina Blahnik can pinpoint the moment she knew she would leave a career in architecture to join the family business, British luxury shoemaker Manolo Blahnik. It was 2009. Her uncle and mother’s brand had been buoyed by the television programme Sex and the City and its heroine Carrie Bradshaw’s predilection for Manolo pumps.

“There was this subconscious pull that had become conscious,” says Blahnik. She had “lived and breathed” the business before then. During her childhood, many school nights were spent meticulously brushing suede shoes at its flagship store in London.



Years later she stepped in to help design a shoe collection when her uncle, the esteemed designer Manolo Blahnik, was unable to. But she wanted more. “I said, ‘give me a chance’; I’d like to see what the opportunities are.

” Blahnik left the architecture practice she had set up with her former husband almost a decade earlier to join the family business, thinking: “If I can build a building, I can probably build a shoe”. From there her position in the company “just organically became a permanent role”. She became chief executive in 2013.

At that point, a team of only six staff, led by Manolo and his sister, Evangelina, was running the company, despite its £945 (US$1,203; S$1,612) Hangisi pumps becoming a wardrobe staple for customers around the world. Today the 54-year-old brand employs more than 250 people, and last year it bought a new head office and showroom in London’s pri.

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