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From Carrie Bradshaw nostalgia to crystal satin heels, Balenciaga's newest collaboration with Manolo Blahnik marks a surprisingly elegant new chapter for fashion
There are certain fashion names that don’t so much enter a room as redecorate it emotionally, and Manolo Blahnik is, for me, permanently in that category. I cannot help it. Before fashion got so committed to irony, to the deliberately ugly shoe(which I, naturally, love), to wearing things three sizes too big as a kind of inside joke we were all supposed to be in on, there was simply Carrie Bradshaw sprinting through New York in satin Manolos. And those shoes were a whole worldview. Feminine, a little overwrought, elegant, dramatic in the precise dose required to make taking out the trash feel like a scene. So when I learned Balenciaga was collaborating with Manolo Blahnik under Pierpaolo Piccioli, I knew, the way you know a text is going to ruin your afternoon before you open it, that this would be one of the most talked-about collaborations of the season. Not because it shouts. The opposite, actually. It feels elegant again, which may be the most significant thing a brand can do right now.
*A small editors note – If you have not watched “The Boy Who Made Shoes For Lizards”, watch it now on Netflix and you will really love and understand the world of Manolo. I loved it.
A Completely Different Kind Of Balenciaga
For years, Balenciaga was the patron saint of provocation: oversized everything, luxury delivered with a smirk, sneakers that arrived pre-destroyed, garments engineered specifically to annoy your mother. Love it or loathe it (and people did both, often in the same breath), the brand ran the conversation. But this Piccioli era already reads as a different language entirely. Softer, more romantic, weirdly emotional about the whole enterprise of getting dressed. The Manolo Blahnik collaboration, which arrived inside the “Body and Being” collection, captures that pivot exactly. It’s three silhouettes: a satin mule and two slingback variations at different heel heights, all finished with crystal embellishment and jewellery-ish detailing that nod both to Manolo’s signature and to archival Balenciaga bijoux from the 1960s. No logos shouting across the toe box, no proportions doing performance art, no gimmickry. Just beautifully made shoes that feel timeless in the way fashion has been craving again, almost sheepishly, for a while now.
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Are they really collector pieces?
The collectible energy arrived early, before the public release even, which is itself telling. Some of that is simply that this is the first-ever Balenciaga x Manolo Blahnik anything, and firsts have their own gravity. The rest is timing. These shoes turn up at the precise moment fashion seems to be backing slowly away from hyper-trend culture and toward things that feel timeless, emotional, archival (a word we now apply to objects roughly four minutes old, but in this case it actually fits). The satin, the crystal leaf detailing, the classic pointed silhouette: it’s all faintly old-Hollywood in the best way. These are not one-season shoes. They are designed to age, and to age flatteringly, which is more than I can say for most of us. That, I think, is the real source of the Carrie Bradshaw association. Not that they resemble anything specific she wore, but that they share her thesis: that fashion is allowed to be emotional and romantic rather than merely useful.
The Details Fashion People Will Love
For a few years there, the entire industry was committed to looking effortless in a deeply effortful way: the oversized silhouette, the ironic styling, the garment engineered to seem almost anti-fashion. Lately, though, I’ve clocked a shift. People seem genuinely excited about elegance again, which feels almost transgressive to type. Kitten heels are creeping back, satin reads as luxurious rather than prom-adjacent, and women are reaching for shoes and tailoring and jewellery that feel refined instead of frantically of-the-moment. You can see it everywhere: in the steady ascent of Alaïa, in the unrelenting devotion to The Row. Fashion is simply more interested in casual femininity and investment pieces than in micro-trends with a two-week shelf life. The Balenciaga x Manolo Blahnik collaboration slots into that movement so neatly it’s almost suspicious, like fashion finally giving itself permission to be glamorous out loud. Which is probably why it already feels collectible.
Per the official Balenciaga site, the satin mules sit at $1290 and the slingbacks at $1390. They come in rich satin shades (black, deep green, soft grey, yellow, purple, depending on the silhouette), though personally I’d argue the black satin versions are the strongest of the lot – though i might need a few others too. They feel timeless in a way I can already picture, ten years out, styled with vintage jewellery, an oversized wool coat and the plainest black tailoring imaginable. Even though they are feminine, I would still wear them with a pair of baggy jeans and a white t shirt.
Why This Collaboration Actually Matters
Collaborations happen constantly now, and most evaporate from the conversation roughly as fast as they entered it. Every so often, though, one lands that feels culturally relevant beyond the hype cycle, and this is, genuinely, one of them. Underneath the crystals and the satin and the very pretty silhouettes, the Balenciaga x Manolo Blahnik collaboration is pointing at something larger: the return of emotion, elegance and femininity to luxury dressing. After years of oversized proportions and aggressively “undone” styling, fashion seems suddenly interested in glamour again, and honestly, I can’t think of a better house than Manolo Blahnik to usher Balenciaga gently into that new chapter.
