MANOLO BLAHNIK: Drawings

"My shoes are not fashion, they are gestures." So says Blahnik in a book that lays out his designs as brightly colored whimsies, sketches deftly convey the essences of his creations. Drawings show shoes alone or with a hint of foot and leg, and yet there is so much energy and color in the 134 illustrations (125 in color) that they seem to wink and pirouette off the page. As designs, the shoes are salacious cartoons of themselves, curvy and heeled, bejeweled and shimmery. Celeb quotes, interspersed throughout, heighten the spiraling sense of posturing and play. Madonna says, "they are as good as sex... and they last longer." "You just put on your Manolos and you automatically find yourself saying 'Hi sailor' to every man that walks by," says Joan Rivers. Naomi Campbell calls the man the "godfather of sole." Paloma Picasso, Isaac Mizrahi, Bianca Jagger also check in, and there are introductory essays by Vogue titans Anna Wintour, André Leon Talley and Anna Piaggi, as well as by Michael Roberts of the New Yorker. The tasteful layout defers to Blahnik's work, with minimalist gray text alongside the circusy colors, and Blahnik's fabulous cursive descriptions. Divided by decade, from the 1970s to the 2000s, the collection is diverse and fun, and as documentary as a museum catalogue. It should appeal to any fashionista or design aficionado—anyone with a sense of shoes as art. (May 1)