"This is the kind of work I love to do because it is free from commercial constraints. With shoes like these, I don’t ever think of selling. They just satisfy the creative craving that I get. They allow me to combine different times and places: in this one, for example, I mix the brutality of Etruscan fortitude with a bit of Scottish Highlands and then a touch of the extremities of Celia Cruz, the Cuban singer who I admired so much as a child! It’s completely irrational, I know, but this is the work that keeps me going."
—Manolo Blahnik
