*not Manolo Blahnik.
[first published on June 14, 2006 at "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog]
I stumbled across the brilliant Manolo completely by accident. The Manolo---always the Manolo!---writes one of the most amusing blogs you are ever likely to encounter. His writing style is unique and inimitable.
His blog is about shoes, yes, but so much else as well.
I am definitely not the sort of person who would normally read a fashion blog. While I have diligently studied the Manolo's advice and counsel for those who wish to be superfantastic, I live a place where most people change out of their shorts only for state occasions where khaki pants are de rigeur. Many of my friends remove their baseball caps only for funerals or to sleep. My friends taunt me for the rigid formality of my wedge-heeled sandals and for preferring skirts to shorts. Before I began reading the Manolo's site, I had never even heard of Crocs. Even persons referred to by the Manolo as "the pot-smoking hippies of the crunchiness" do not bother to wear Birkenstocks or Earth shoes. Mostly they wear flip flops or the sandals you can buy at CVS pharmacy.
Thoroughly beguiled by the Manolo's intelligence, wit, and inimitable style, I check his site every day for the Manolo's remarks on topics of interest to the Manolo and therefore now to me. Every Tuesday I check out what the Manolo is reading, eating, and watching. I follow with interest the floating "Carnival of the Couture." I relish the fashion failings of the fashion forward in "Bad Fashion." And of course I also look at all the pretty, pretty shoes with great admiration and pleasure.
Thanks to the Manolo I at least will never on any account be guilty of purchasing a pair of baby pink Uggs, a pair of Birkenstock Bostons, or a pair of Crocs (all prominently featured in "The Gallery of the Horrors"). Regarding the Crocs, the Manolo says:
The Crocs people they seem to believe that the womens and the mens they deserve the exact same shoe.
Perhaps, this it will be true in the socialist utopia of the future when the differences between the genders they have been eliminated by the selective breeding, but not yet. We, happily, still live in the world where the shoes for the man and the shoe for the woman they are different....These they are indeed the shoes of a hypothetical distopian future, one in which the inmates they must be dressed in the footwear least likely to be useful in the popular uprising against the regime.
Of the Dansko Teton, he says:
[H]ere you see the Dansko Teton, the shoe that its makers describe as the "men's sport clog".
As far at the Manolo knows, there is no sport that is best played with the clog on the foot, and so it is most likely that this description, it was given in the hopes that the potato of the couch, as he clomped the aisles of the Wal-Mart, or sank into his Boy of Laziness for the protracted TV viewing, would feel good about himself.
Thanks to the Manolo, I am now acquainted with (and can quote to my young friends) Miuccia Prada's wise words on the message conveyed to others by maintaining dignity in one's dress. I have learned to recognize the minions of the Manolo's nemesis in the perhaps unlikely event of my encountering any. I have even learned to recognize (and flee in terror from) Russian fashion trends.
As of July 12, this blog had two million visits to its credit. It is a diverse feast of internet delights. Manolo's shoeblog: not just about the shoes.
Comments