The Best Fashion Accessories of 2022: Top Items for Gifting (and for ...
Below, our guide to the best fashion accessories of 2022; featuring items to gift, give, and obsess over well into the next calendar year.
Birkenstock x Manolo Blahnik
Some items formed deep roots from a sort of wonderful persistence (we’re talking about you, stacks of Saint Laurent metal and wood bangles in both runway shows this year). While others became things we even didn’t know we needed (looking at you, Gigi Hadid’s Guest In Residence creation of an actual scarf sweater—an ode to the fashion world’s styling of their sweaters this way for years). And then there was perfect alignment of the stars with the <anchor>Birkenstock x Manolo Blahnik</anchor> collaboration. Hallelujah to both comfort and sparkle! Whichever collaboration or sought-after accessory made your year, they’ve all become important pieces to our team.
Manolo Blahnik Wants Your Feet to Be Happy | Vanity Fair
Manolo Blahnik Wants Your Feet to Be Happy \| Vanity Fair

[Skip to main content](#main-content)

Open Navigation Menu
Menu

Story Saved

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then [View saved stories](/account/saved).

Close Alert

[![Vanities](/verso/static/vanity-fair/assets/logo-header.svg)](/)

[Search\
Search](/search)

- [Politics](/news/politics)
- [Business](/news/business)
- [Hollywood](/hollywood)
- [Style](/style)
- [Culture](/culture)
- [Royals](/style/royals)
- [Celebrity](/style/celebrity)
- [Video](/video)
- [Podcasts](/podcasts)
- [Archive](https://archive.vanityfair.com)
- [VF Shop](https://shop.vanityfair.com/)
- [What Is Cinema?](/hollywood/what-is-cinema)

- [Archive](https://archive.vanityfair.com/)
- [VF Shop](https://shop.vanityfair.com/)
- [Magazine](/magazine)

Fashion

# Manolo Blahnik Wants Your Feet to Be Happy

With the second phase of his coveted Birkenstock collaboration launching soon, the footwear designer talks embracing the comfortable sandal—and making it his own.

By [Iva Dixit](/contributor/iva-dixit)

June 1, 2022

- [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?&display=popup&caption=Manolo%20Blahnik%20Wants%20Your%20Feet%20to%20Be%20Happy&app_id=256281040558&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vanityfair.com%2Fstyle%2F2022%2F06%2Fmanolo-blahnik-wants-your-feet-to-be-happy%3Futm_source%3Dfacebook%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dvanity-fair%26utm_social-type%3Dearned)
- [X](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vanityfair.com%2Fstyle%2F2022%2F06%2Fmanolo-blahnik-wants-your-feet-to-be-happy%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dvanity-fair%26utm_social-type%3Dearned&text=Manolo%20Blahnik%20Wants%20Your%20Feet%20to%20Be%20Happy&via=VanityFair)
- [Email](mailto:?subject=Manolo%20Blahnik%20Wants%20Your%20Feet%20to%20Be%20Happy&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vanityfair.com%2Fstyle%2F2022%2F06%2Fmanolo-blahnik-wants-your-feet-to-be-happy%3Futm_source%3Donsite-share%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dvanity-fair)
- Save Story


![Image may contain Clothing Apparel Footwear Human Person Shoe and Sandal](https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/6297a8a5c97d70db34389342/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/Manolo-Blahnik-x-Birkenstock-story-image.jpg)

Manolo Blahnik with dozens of his shoes in his salon.By Ian Cook/Getty Images.

Save this storySave

Save this storySave

In 2021, my feet went into mutiny. No longer content to silently endure the torment of the ill-fitting sandals, pinchy boots and clunky platforms that I had been subjecting them to for years, even the slightest chafing or blistering was now met with a “thanks, but no” spasm of discomfort so intense, all pretenses of formality were abandoned for the nearest orthotic sole I could find. I was clearly not the only one whose feet were launching this perambulatory revolt, if the [record-high spikes in the sales of Birkenstocks](https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/899060826/nearly-250-year-old-shoe-company-sees-a-spike-in-popularity-amid-the-pandemic), the 246-year-old German footwear company, were any indication.

But look, even the ancient Macedonian army under Alexander had to learn to make the switch from boots to open-toed sandals when faced with the heat of India, the legendary shoe designer **Manolo Blahnik** tells me, and in that same tradition, we are nothing but just one more people in a long line of civilizations who’ve abandoned heels for an ugly but comfortable sandal. Blahnik and I are speaking a month after the initial release of his collaboration with Birkenstock, which featured the German brand’s Arizona sandal and Boston clog in rich jewel tones. In his reimagining, the famously crunchy footwear was freed from its former Berkeley philosophy professor associations and went full Petit Trianon, rendered in a decadent fuchsia and lapis blue velvet, with additions of two showy crystal buckles (“I put my little touches on it”). To absolutely no one’s surprise—except perhaps Blahnik’s own—the collection sold out in less than half a day. “We sold out in twelve hours! All the shopping sites in New York, Tokyo—can you believe?” he declares with uncontained glee, speaking to me from his mother’s home in the Canary Islands, apologizing for the flimsy connection because a brief volcanic eruption has disrupted all the phone lines on the island. (I can, in fact believe, as both Blahnik and Birkenstock loyalists are rather bloodthirsty shoppers when it comes to acquiring the objects of their worship). Items from that first drop are now listed on resale sites for upwards of double their list price. “I was ambiguous about this, you know,” he continues, growing pensive, “But now I am totally completely in a different mind, because the young people who bought them, they got into my shoes! I am very happy. Birkenstock has made a new audience for me, of people who are 19 or 20!”

Shop the collaboration, available June 23, on the [Birkenstock website](https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATFNKDxEvAxfFpeswqJQQrCvWk644g5WgN2foUdVmsHZjeR8KhrWbAm4BmsFWxFfrkUqVNzS5nwBHsP2iwThejjfhuTXDQ4aH7tYV1JR7qpjxStGvJ4JGjzJfV8Gxi3a3STfTMBJ1wFMcjzqbQa38gpnfpEAjp).
Birkenstock

Blahnik’s first brush with the German sandal was when he was studying politics and law at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where summers can get stiflingly hot, and where he saw his Nordic classmates parading around in these orthopedic contraptions. Fascinated and also a little repulsed, he acquired himself a pair and since then has maintained a love-hate-and-love-again fondness towards them (a 2000 _New Yorker_ profile describes the brand as “a word, by the way, that Blahnik can’t bring himself to utter”). But Birkenstocks have long been part of his gardening uniform, and in 2020 he and his niece and CEO **Kristina** both featured in a Birkenstock campaign. The next phase of the collaboration, launching June 23, is a bit more restrained, but no less eccentric, featuring the Boston clog in black and white, polka-dotted, calf hair and the Arizona rendered in vegetal PVC, an homage to Blahnik’s own archives of experimenting with the material in the 1970s. (“It doesn’t make you sweaty!”)

It can often feel that our era of fashion is one in which clothes are no longer clothes; everything is an unfunny meta-commentary on itself or a joyless money-grab in the literal Metaverse. But Blahnik, in his unadulterated pursuit of tangible beauty and delight, is a purist even in the hedonism he purveys. He is at heart a maker and a tinkerer (“I just love it to death and up to my last minute, I’ll be doing shoes”) and fanatic in his scientific worship of feet, the hardest-working human extremity. Isolated in his home in the Canary Islands, he has been working in solitude for two years, giving instructions over zoom for his new store on Madison Avenue that he hasn’t even seen in person yet. He abhors sneakers (“What I do not like are those trainers that cost a fortune and look like furniture!”) but he loves sandals. Oh, if there is one thing that Manolo Blahnik adores, they are sandals. Grecian sandals, Roman sandals, Indian leather _chappals,_ sandals from Capri, fisherman sandals, Biblical sandals. His name may be synonymous with the elegantly pointy, fang-like heels that cemented his place in the pop-cultural canon of the 2000s, but his heart belongs to sandals and all their erotic promise, which I will confess I had never considered until hearing him erupt with ebullience while describing the glance of a beautiful foot peeking through leather bindings.

Most Popular

- Hollywood



[33 Fall TV Shows to Watch in 2024](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/new-tv-shows-fall-2024#intcid=_vanity-fair-right-rail_def50ba0-3bfe-4596-a565-12a07fd73eb5_popular4-1)







By Hillary Busis

- Television



[_The Bachelorette_ Had Its Most Dramatic Finale Ever, but at What Cost?](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/the-bachelorette-finale-jenn-tran-devin#intcid=_vanity-fair-right-rail_def50ba0-3bfe-4596-a565-12a07fd73eb5_popular4-1)







By Savannah Walsh

- Hollywood



[_The Life of Chuck_: The Feel-Good Stephen King Apocalypse Movie](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/life-of-chuck-tom-hiddleston-stephen-king-mike-flanagan#intcid=_vanity-fair-right-rail_def50ba0-3bfe-4596-a565-12a07fd73eb5_popular4-1)







By Anthony Breznican


Shop the collaboration, available June 23, on the [Birkenstock website](https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATFNKDxEvAxfFpeswqJQQrCvWk644g5WgN2foUdVmsHZjeR8KhrWbAm4BmsFWxFfrkUqVNzS5nwBHsP2iwThejjfhuTXDQ4aH7tYV1JR7qpjxStGvJ4JGjzJfV8Gxi3a3STfTMBJ1wFMcjzqbQa38gpnfpEAjp).

At some point during the past decade, they stopped making both shoes and movies for adults, and if you, like me, are a person trying to go about the mundanity of your daily life with a bare minimum of non-cartoonish dignity, the few choices available are clunkers that resemble a Hans Hopfer sofa more than anything made for humans to move around in. “Shoes always express something of the wearer,” says Blahnik. When the collaboration was announced, fans of both were polarized, wondering at the odd pairing. But to me, the coming together of Manolos and Birkenstocks makes complete sense. Having never strayed from their DNA, they are both exceptions to the infantilization of consumers so prevalent today, but most of all, despite being on opposite ends of the sexiness spectrum, they are both made to be walked in. To my heavily 2005-influenced mind, Manolos have always been associated with the freedoms that I imagined adulthood would bring. Not merely a life of clinking cosmopolitan glasses, as the _Sex and the City_ fantasies sold us in pre-recession America, but one of fullness, of movement, one in which there are places to go, appointments to keep. A life of motion, carried through by feet that are outfitted elegantly and can keep the rest of your body in that motion. Without blisters, without pausing, without stumbling.

## More Great Stories From _Vanity Fair_

- [October Cover Star Selena Gomez](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/selena-gomez-cover-interview) Opens Up: “I Unfortunately Can’t Carry My Own Children”

- Disaster? What Disaster? [In Trumpworld](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trumpworld-debate-response) the Debate Was a Win

- The [Richest Man in Germany](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/richest-german-nazi-billions) Is Worth $44 Billion. The Source of His Family Fortune? The Nazis Know.

- Is This the End of _[Selling Sunset](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/is-this-the-end-of-selling-sunset-as-we-know-it-season-8)_ as We Know It?

- The [20 Best Fall Movies](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/best-fall-movies) to Cozy Up With This Season

- Behind the Catholic Right’s [Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/catholic-right-celebrity-conversion-industrial-complex)

- “Are You Saying No to Elon Musk?”: [Scenes From the Twitter Buyout](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/elon-musk-twitter-buyout)

- [_Inside the Hive_](https://link.chtbl.com/t0ZPI7j0) Breaks Down the Presidential Debate, the GOP’s Extreme Policies, and More

- From the Archive: Meet the [Dynamite Socialite](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/6305b1fa-9d1f-4709-966b-19a7d09903f9) Princess TNT of Bavaria


# Iva Dixit

[See More By Iva Dixit »](/contributor/iva-dixit)

### Royal Watch

An overview of the chatter from Kensington Palace and beyond.

Enter your e-mail

Sign Up

By signing up you agree to our [User Agreement](https://www.condenast.com/user-agreement) and [Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement](https://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy). This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google [Privacy Policy](https://policies.google.com/privacy) and [Terms of Service](https://policies.google.com/terms) apply.

Read More

Hollywood

[Selena Gomez on Her Best Role Yet and Romance With Benny Blanco: “I’ve Never Been Loved This Way”](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/selena-gomez-cover-interview#intcid=recommendations_vanity-fair-bottom-recirc-v4_057612c3-d551-45f6-b773-2416ca88e269_entity-topic-similarity-v2)

Candid talk about her evolving plans for motherhood and more from the star of _Emilia Pérez_ and _Only Murders in the Building._

By Yohana Desta

Award Season

[For Her Next Act, Tilda Swinton Takes Off the Disguise](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/tilda-swinton-room-next-door-the-end-awards-insider#intcid=recommendations_vanity-fair-bottom-recirc-v4_057612c3-d551-45f6-b773-2416ca88e269_entity-topic-similarity-v2)

“I have made a game out of dressing up and playing around for so many years,” Swinton tells _Vanity Fair_. With this fall’s _The Room Next Door_ and _The End_, she’s showing up as herself—and the results are searing.

By David Canfield

Award Season

[Creative Arts Emmys 2024: See the Winners Here](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/creative-arts-emmys-2024-winners-list-awards-insider#intcid=recommendations_vanity-fair-bottom-recirc-v4_057612c3-d551-45f6-b773-2416ca88e269_entity-topic-similarity-v2)

The two-night Creative Arts Emmy Awards concluded on Sunday with big wins for _Shōgun_ and a new pair of EGOT winners in Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

By Eve Batey

Royals

[Kate Middleton Has Completed Chemotherapy After Nine “Incredibly Tough” Months](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/kate-middleton-has-completed-chemotherapy#intcid=recommendations_vanity-fair-bottom-recirc-v4_057612c3-d551-45f6-b773-2416ca88e269_entity-topic-similarity-v2)

“As the summer comes to an end, I cannot tell you what a relief it is to have finally completed my chemotherapy treatment,” the Princess of Wales said in a new video released Monday.

By Katie Nicholl

[![Vanity Fair](/verso/static/vanity-fair/assets/logo-small-white.svg)](/)

- [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/vanityfairmagazine)
- [X](https://twitter.com/vanityfair)
- [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/vanityfair/)
- [Pinterest](https://www.pinterest.com/VanityFair/)
- [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/user/VanityFairMagazine)

More from Vanity Fair

- [Newsletters](/newsletters)
- [Subscribe](https://adclick.g.doubleclick.net/pcs/click?xai=AKAOjssc5DpG2q7MGxrHMxZezKOqswtMDF6_09HkiL8uAGJKzDTpCVW6u4UMCm4cL_-yuCxwP4NtVt3VRHRbYGWjqr5bEJqjgb8o7ZwYTZLv7be03Ud32Ws7rPuSILf77sZfMXmaQU5wrzkjmsjieC1LaXQPHaCP_F3b9y1NSpGg545d6bHVgEWn-P79Wy5krMsQMzpnXUtuyesyRoS1H6XASPlzYj1R6pnyx7SwSxVujQI0SK8zvkVajFRtvuA9cN2z&sai=AMfl-YSgoG5Ci2-vXdDHYcjjqiWP0vmndq6Yk5kU0PZackIzP3RJJOM9ej40QDwCdG-yKtsKE2a0dmb4VrGODuIzTIcqpJp66x74CYADNhU-vOKWpHOfUuMuuFi_jGJNxkb_ubRF7ANFMZ2NasI2XdSW&sig=Cg0ArKJSzE-e_pQ-tYYfEAE&urlfix=1&adurl=https://subscribe.vanityfair.com/subscribe/vanityfair/118234%3Fsource%3DAMS_VYF_GLOBAL_SITE_FOOTER_SUBSCRIBE_1mFREETEST_TEST%26pos_name%3DAMS_VYF_GLOBAL_SITE_FOOTER_SUBSCRIBE)
- [Digital Edition](/app)
- [Inside the Issue](/credits)
- [About Vanity Fair](https://www.vanityfair.com/info/about-vanity-fair)
- [FAQ](/info/faq)

Contact

- [Contact VF](/contact/contact-us)
- [Customer Service](https://w1.buysub.com/servlet/CSGateway?cds_mag_code=VYF)
- [Advertising](https://www.condenast.com/brands/vanity-fair)
- [Careers](https://www.condenast.com/careers)

- [User Agreement](https://www.condenast.com/user-agreement/)
- [Privacy Policy](http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy)
- [Your California Privacy Rights](http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy-california)
- [Condé Nast Store](https://condenaststore.com/~/vanity-fair?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=VanityFair&utm_content=FOOTER&AID=1244593740)
- [VF Media Kit](http://www.condenastmediakit.com/vf/)
- [Accessibility Help](/accessibility-help)

© 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. _Vanity Fair_ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. [Ad Choices](http://www.aboutads.info)

CN Entertainment

###### Select international site

United StatesLargeChevron

- [Italy](https://www.vanityfair.it/)
- [Spain](https://www.revistavanityfair.es/)
- [France](https://www.vanityfair.fr/)