Kristina Blahnik on converting legacy into stiletto-high growth

Welcome to The Luxury Minute by Jing Daily, where we take you inside the boardroom for unfiltered conversations with C-suite executives and creatives shaping fashion and beauty across global markets. In our third podcast episode, we speak with Kristina Blahnik, Chief Executive Officer of her uncle’s eponymous London-based luxury footwear brand Manolo Blahnik. In an industry increasingly defined by fleeting viral moments and independent designer struggles, Manolo Blahnik remains a masterclass in enduring luxury. For 55 years, the Spanish shoemaker has perfected the balance of meticulous craftsmanship and cultural cachet, transforming the stiletto heel into a popular culture protagonist among icons like Princess Diana, Kate Moss, Rihanna, and very famously, Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw. Since joining in 2009, Kristina Blahnik, the founder’s niece and from 2013 the firm’s CEO, has been leading the family-run business into new markets while honoring its creative heritage. “When you embark on joining a family business, you have to build your own identity within that,” says Blahnik. “This business is a member of my family. It comes with highs and lows, but we work through them because we’re together, and we’re independent so we can move, and be very agile as a family business.” Under her leadership, Manolo Blahnik has refined its creative direction and consumer engagement, as well as streamlining its wholesale strategy. This helped manifest the brand’s first store in China, at Shanghai’s Plaza 66, which opened in November 2024. A year on, the store has become a touchpoint for the brand, allowing it to meaningfully engage with a customer base that had historically relied on international travel to purchase its designs. Recorded a month after the opening of the Victoria & Albert museum’s exhibition on Marie Antoinette, where Manolo Blahnik shoes plays a leading role for their appearances in Sofia Coppola’s movie, Blahnik reflects on why business in China is important to her, and the ways in which the family business continues to resonate culturally as much as commercially. Listen to the full episode now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Continue reading for excerpts from the full conversation. Jing Daily: After a 22-year legal struggle over the Manolo Blahnik name, the Supreme People’s Court of China ruled in favor of the brand in 2022, which enabled you to reclaim its trademark and finally operate freely in mainland China. Kristina Blahnik: I remember our chief legal officer, our head of legal at the time, calling my mother and my uncle — I said you have to tell them together. So, we all did a digital call. My mother and my uncle both burst into tears. That is how important this was to us. It isn’t a commercial venture. This is an emotional moment. JD: Bloggers were posting Manolo Blahniks on Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) before you opened your store. You’ve released store exclusive styles, including ones inspired by the Chinese winter jasmine flower. Will there be more China exclusives? KB: Always. There will always be, because it’s such a discerning market with such individuality, we are always going to be creating unique elements for our community in China. Winter Jasmine was very much inspired by the gardens that Manolo visited when he went to China in the early nineties. I remember, he had his first digital camera. He took, I don’t know how many thousands of photos, and so many of them were of flowers. He’s a botanist in many ways. So the winter Jasmine resonated with his aesthetic, his passion. We want to celebrate these moments that are unique to China and the Chinese New Year. Yes, it is a global celebration, but of course we always want to do [China] exclusives around that period. Our Shanghai store is one of the very few stores in the world that has the Marie Antoinette collection that we have created in celebration of the exhibition in London, which is open until March [2026]. I can’t give any details, but we are working on something that we are planning to launch in China first. JD: Collaborations have been an integral part of cutting through to different consumers over the past decade. You’ve even collaborated with Birkenstock, which surprised a lot of people. How do most of your collaborations happen, and what’s the process from concept to production? KB: Our collaborations are always serendipitous and organic. And what I mean by that is that we don’t seek them out; they come to us, and they are always based on a curiosity or mutual passion for each other, such as Rihanna. A curiosity for what Manolo was doing, a curiosity for Birkenstock. Both of us were making footwear in very different ways, but there were so many alignments, and that was such a magical collaboration. And then of course, Mari Antoinette, that is when we heard that the Victoria & Albert Museum was going to put on the Marie Antoinette exhibition — it was just so clear to me that it had to be us. It had to be the name Manolo Blahnik next to Marie Antoinette, because how many opportunities in life do you have for that magic to happen? And if those collaborations come about in a really organic, natural, curious way … Let’s do this for fun, not for commercial gain. JD: A lot of the cultural moments that Manolo Blahnik has been part of are so huge that you’ll always have that nostalgia to revert back to as a company. How do you balance preserving the legacy of the brand while also pushing into new territory? KB: It’s about being uncompromising and what we stand for. We have a community that has been so loyal to us and grown over 55 years that we don’t want to change our direction of travel. We will evolve, but we are about aesthetics, proportions, elegance. We are about elevating, whether that be physically through a heel or a material. That is what we believe in. We also believe in the hands and the artisans and the crafts people who make what we do in celebrating the art in ‘artisan.’ We don’t just make shoes, we breathe life into them. So, you are not going to be seeing us doing a sneaker because that is not part of what we believe our aesthetic is. Listen to the full episode now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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Kristina Blahnik on converting legacy into stiletto-high growth