High Society's Cobbler

Manolo Blahnik hates traveling. He hates airports, train stations, planes and trains. But these days Blahnik spends most of his time on the road. He goes to Italy, where he still personally oversees the production of his $500-a-pair shoe collection; to the Canary Islands, to visit his 90-year-old mother; to the United States, where most of his customers live. He also travels from his Georgian home in Bath, where he stores some 10,000 pairs of what he affectionately calls his "stupid shoes," to his office on the fashionable King's Road in Chelsea, London.

Blahnik's "stupid shoes" have traveled...