The first Balenciaga shoes crafted in collaboration with Manolo Blahnik, which were featured in the clothing brand’s fall 2026 collection, Body and Being, launch in select stores on Tuesday. Balenciaga‘s creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli partnered with the luxury shoe designer, who has more than five decades of experience, to create a trio of new shoe styles.
“This collaboration came to life for very personal reasons. I simply like Manolo. That’s it. I know him personally and have admired him for a long time,” Piccioli said in a statement about the collaboration. “To me, Manolo Blahnik is synonymous with elegance and as he’s Spanish — like Cristóbal Balenciaga — there’s a certain shared sensibility there.”
As FN reported in January, the Balenciaga and Manolo Blahnik shoe collection was inspired by styles that Piccioli chose from archival Manolo Blahnik designs. The collaboration includes a low-heeled mule and a slingback design with either a 105mm or a 50mm heel in jewel tone and neutral shades.
The Balenciaga x Manolo Blahnik crystal-embellished slingback heel, slingback kitten heel and slingback mule come in black, gris plume, grass, lime or violet silk-satin. The shoes are designed with décolleté silhouettes that reveal the sides of the foot.
They are executed in silk-satin, and lined with leather in Balenciaga’s signature gray. The shoes are embellished with asymmetrical crystal leaf ornaments that are hand-embroidered to drape across a low-cut vamp.
A sketch of the shoes.
The detail echoes Blahnik’s distinct flair for fusing jewelry with footwear, which is a style choice that connects both designers. The accents are also drawn and recalled from archival 1960s Balenciaga bijoux designed by Cristóbal Balenciaga.
The shoes arrive in specially co-branded packaging consisting of dustbags, a shoebox and a tissue liner. The collection is now available in select Balenciaga stores worldwide and on balenciaga.com.
