Sangria, Sol y Siesta

Saturday, 1 December 2012

LOS MANOLOS SHOES OF MANOLO BLAHNIK DESIGNER

The shoe designer Manolo Blahnik (Santa Cruz de la Palma, Canary Islands, Spain 1942), has been recently awarded the National Prize Fashion Design 2012. Internationally renowned, Manolo Blahnik has used the last four decades in dress women's feet with his famous "Manolos" designs that sometimes reach eight inches heel.

Born to a Czech father and a Spanish mother and raised in the Canary Islands, Blahnik graduated from the University of Geneva in 1965 and studied art in Paris. He moved to London in 1968 to work at fashion boutique "Zapata" and wrote for Vogue Italia. After showing his portfolio of fashions and set designs to Diana Vreeland, she told him that he should design only footwear. In 1972, Ossie Clark invited him to create shoes for his runway show. With a loan of £2,000, Blahnik bought "Zapata" from its owner and opened his own boutique

Influenced by Visconti's films and paintings by El Greco, Goya, Velázquez and Zurbarán, Spanish designer has created more than 20,000 pairs of shoes following a traditional process in which he designs, shapes and finishes each of his shoes, who baptizes with the original names.

Manolos typically cost between 500 and 6000 euros. With 22,000 designed shoes, Blahnik has worked with heels of all heights and popularity of their models finished giving his own name to them and inventing some models, like the "kitten heel" (a heel of 3 cm).

In the 1970s, Manolo Blahnik turned back his attention to the stiletto heel, which has remained the brand's mainstay to this day. Manolo Blahnik shoes have rapidly become a symbol of pure classical style for the 21st century.

Blahnik's boutiques are located in London, New York, Las Vegas, Dublin, Athens, Madrid, Istanbul, Dubai, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore and Stockholm.

Part of their success has to do with celebrities from film and music who love his shoes such as Madonna, who has come to describe them as "better than sex", since "last longer". Or such as the actress Sarah Jessica Parker in the series "Sex and the City", who in one of its chapters and fully struggle with a burglar pleads " Take my Fendi bag, my ring and my watch, but please do not take my Manolo Blahniks".

Also Los Manolos appear in a Lady Gaga song and in the "Twilight saga: Breaking Dawn" film, Bella Swam wears Manolo Blahnik shoes for her wedding. They appear as well in the bestseller “Fifty shades of Grey”. And Letizia Ortiz wore Manolos when she married Prince Philip. And among his many admirers are: Jessica Biel, Kathy Perry, Miranda Kerr, Jennifer Aniston, Rihanna, Katie Holmes, Blake Lively, Olivia Palermo and Victoria Beckham.

"Men tell me I've saved their marriages, it has cost them a fortune on shoes, but it's cheaper than a divorce, so it seems that I am still useful", the designer jokes .......

This prodigious shoemaker have accumulated numerous awards. Blahnik was elevated to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1987. He was awarded the honorary title of Commander of the British Empire in 2007 for his service to the British fashion industry and was the first shoe designer who has exhibited his work at the Design Museum in London.

Blahnik currently lives in Bath, United Kingdom and was awarded an honorary degree from Bath Spa University in July 2012.

There is not any doubt Los Manolos are elegant, prestigious, beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful, amazing....... but........ I have only just one question ....…..are they also comfortable?

Source:

El diario de Navarra

20 minutos

Wikipedia

Friday, 26 October 2012

ODD QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT..... OR MAYBE NOT!

If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

When we are in the supermarket and someone rams our ankle with a shopping cart, then apologizes for doing so; do we say “It’s all right”? Well, it isn’t all right so why don’t we say, “That really hurt you dumb sh*t, why don’t you watch where you’re going?

If 4 out of 5 people suffer from diarrhoea…. Does that mean that one out of five enjoys it?

If it’s true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?

Do Lipton Tea employees take “coffee breaks”?

If a cow laughed would milk come out of her nose?

Why, why, why do we press harder on the remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?

Why do banks charge a fee due to insufficient funds; when they already know you’re broke?

Why is it that when someone tells you that there are one billion stars in the universe you believe them, but if they tell you there is wet paint you have to touch it to check?

Why do they use sterilized needles for lethal injections?

Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard?

Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?

Why is it that no plastic bag will ever open from the first end you try?

Why, in winter, do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?

How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?

And the last one….. The statistics on sanity say that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re OK? (then, it’s you!)

REMEMBER, a day without a smile is like a day without sunshine! And a day without sunshine is, like …… night!!!

Saturday, 6 October 2012

LA ALHAMBRA PALACE AND PAINTERS WHO WERE INSPIRED BY IT

Edouard Gerhardt

The most visited monument in Spain is The Alhambra. It was a palace, a fortress and a citadel, as well as the residence of the Nasrid Sultans and top government officials, court servants and the royal guard.

The name Alhambra comes from an Arabic root which means "red castle", perhaps due to the towers and walls that surround the entire hill which by starlight is silver but by sunlight is transformed into gold. Though there is another more poetic version, evoked by the Moslem analysts who speak of the construction of the Alhambra fortress "by the light of torches", the reflections of which gave the walls their particular coloration.

There is no reference to the Alhambra as being a residence of kings until the 13th century, even though the fortress had existed since the 9th century. The first kings of Granada, the Zirites, had their castles and palaces on the hill of the Albaicin, and nothing remains of them.

The Nasrid ruler Ibn al-Ahmar made Granada his capital. Within the walls he began a palace, which he supplied with running water by diverting the River Darro nearly 8 km to the foot of the hill; water is an integral part of the Alhambra and this engineering feat was Ibn al-Ahmar's greatest contribution.

The founder of the dynasty, Muhammed Al-Ahmar, began with the restoration of the old fortress. His work was completed by his son Muhammed II, whose immediate successors continued with the repairs. The construction of the palaces (called Casa Real Vieja, "old Royal House or Palace") dates back to the 14th century and is the work of two great kings: Yusuf I and Muhammed V. To the first we owe, among others, the "Cuarto de Comares" (Chamber of Comares), the "Puerta de la Justicia" (Gate of Justice), the Baths and some towers. His son, Muhammed V, completed the beautification of the palaces with the "Cuarto de los Leones" (Chamber of the Lions), as well as other rooms and fortifications.

The Alhambra became a Christian court in 1492 when the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand and Isabel) conquered the city of Granada. After their conquest of the city, the Reyes Católicos lived for a while in the Alhambra. They restored some rooms and converted the mosque but left the palace structure unaltered. As at Córdoba and Sevilla, it was Emperor Carlos V, their grandson, who wreaked the most insensitive destruction, demolishing a whole wing of rooms in order to build a Renaissance palace. The remaining Austrian kings did not forget the monument and have left their own more discreet impressions on it.

In 1812 it was taken and occupied by Napoleon's forces. Two decades later the Alhambra's "rediscovery" began, given impetus by the American writer Washington Irving, who set up his study in the empty palace rooms and began to write his marvellously romantic “Tales of the Alhambra” (on sale all over Granada – and good reading amid the gardens and courts). Shortly after its publication, the Spaniards made the Alhambra a national monument and set aside funds for its restoration. This continues to the present day and is now a highly sophisticated project.

During the 18th century and part of the 19th, the Alhambra fell into neglect until 1870 when the Alhambra was declared a national monument. Travellers and romantic artists of all countries had railed against those who scorned the most beautiful of their monuments. Since that date and up to now, the Alhambra, protected, restored, cared for and even improved, has been preserved for the pleasure and admiration of all.

It is currently an artistic-historical monumental group with four clearly distinguishable zones: the Palaces, the military zone or Alcazaba, the city or Medina and the villa of the Generalife, all of them surrounded by woods, trees, gardens, parks and vegetable gardens.

And here you are some samples of how different painters have inspired on this work of art in the course of time.