Spanish shoe designer Manolo Blahnik was BOTD in 1942. Born Manuel Blahnik in Santa Cruz de La Palma in the Canary Islands, he was home-schooled before being sent to boarding school in Switzerland. His parents enrolled him at the University of Geneva to study international law. Instead, he completed a degree in literature and architecture, before moving to Paris to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Louvre. In 1969, he moved to London to work as a fashion buyer and wrote for The Sunday Times and L’Uomo Vogue. While travelling in New York, he met American Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who reviewed his designs and advised him to concentrate on designing shoes. He took her advice and began designing women’s shoes for British fashion designers Ossie Clark, Jean Muir and Zandra Rhodes. In 1978, he moved to New York City, selling his shoes at department store chains including Bloomingdales, Barneys, Neiman Marcus and Saks. His celebrity clients included Bianca Jagger, who famously wore a pair of his shoes when making her monumental entrance into Studio 54 nightclub on horseback. In the 1990s, he became a household name in Darren Star‘s TV series Sex and the City, in which the shoe-obsessed Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) dropped his name at least once per episode, modelling hundreds of his stiletto heels. In 2006, he won acclaim for his shoe designs for Sophia Coppola’s revisionist biopic Marie Antoinette. Openly gay since forever, he stated in a 2014 interview: “Relationships for me are a no-no. Imagine having to talk to someone all the time or waking up with them breathing all over you. Not for me at all.”