The Florence factory behind cult footwear brand Manolo Blahnik

It's particularly fitting that Manolo Blahnik, the shoe designer who creates pure fantasy in footwear form, should house his factory in a fairy-tale setting. The site in Lamporecchio, an hour west of Florence, looks like an advertisement for the Tuscan tourist board: miles of undulating hillside dotted with cypress trees and bell towers. Admittedly, the cicadas are drowned out by the noise and industry of the factory floor, as grinding wheels shear soles, and lethal-looking premonta machines stamp the sides of shoes to fix the sole to the upper section, but there's still a sprinkle of magic to the artistry here.

This is where most of Manolo Blahnik's men's shoes have been crafted since 2017 by the firm of Fratelli Borgioli (founded by a pair of brothers in 1946). They make everything from his solid Derbys to his jewelled evening slippers. The company, which is still family-owned, creates luxury men's footwear for a select list of Paris and Milan fashion houses. But Blahnik's designs are the most intricate.

'They have really refined the process, which is why I wanted to have my shoes made there,' explains Blahnik. 'The artisans have spent their lives perfecting what they do. It's more than work, it's a passion.' Their enthusiasm for footwear is matched only by that of Blahnik himself, who arrived in London from his native Canary Islands in 1969 and quickly became a fixture on the party scene, making shoes for the likes of Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and Tina Chow.

Alongside his glamorous women's designs, Blahnik, now 79, had always made men's shoes, 'for myself, and for my friends at the time - Bryan Ferry, Marc Bolan - but only a few pairs.' Connoisseurs could spot a Manolo Blahnik men's shoe a mile off - his signature was suede brogues in bold colours - but it wasn't until 2018 that he opened a Burlington Arcade shop devoted to men's accessories, and this side of the business took off. That was when Fratelli Borgioli stepped in.

The current CEO of Fratelli Borgioli, Giacomo Fioravanti, was inspired by the way the South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai set up its factory with separate isolas, as Blahnik terms them, specialising in different areas. This method, instead of a production line, means that the different parts of the shoe can be created at the same time before being fitted together.

The first stage begins with Blahnik's design. 'Everything,' he says, 'can inspire me, from Mediterranean history to Georgian style, the beautiful shoes worn by Alain Delon in Purple Noon [the 1960 French version of The Talented Mr Ripley], 1960s London, La Dolce Vita...' Once drawn, the sketch is turned into a technical design by specialists who measure the drawing with lasers, then the various sections are transferred on to a machine to start the cutting.

Rolls of leather, velvet, suede and exotic skins - stacked in shades from poison green and citrine to plum and crimson - are then either sliced by machine or, in rare cases, painstakingly cut by an expert artisan slitting the material with a scalpel on a metal workspace slashed and dented by years of cutting. Some materials are more demanding than others; stingray, for example, requires careful attention thanks to the tiny, tooth-like scales on the surface of the fish's skin, hard enough to break a scalpel.

The processes involved sound like the menu of a local trattoria. There's spaccatura, in which materials are fed through a machine like pizza dough being stretched, to compress the leather or suede to an exact thinness. Then there's scarnitura, whereby edges are pared down to make them stitchable. Tassels are crafted on a fustella, a stamp with razor-sharp blades.

The process of sealing the upper to the sole is the most highly skilled: knowing how much pressure to apply as the machine pushes one section on to the other comes from intuition coupled with years of experience. The pattern cutter has been working here for 22 years and is, he says, still learning. One craftswoman, who punches the holes in the panels that will be applied to a pair of brogues, has been on the staff for 41 years. 'Tuscany is very special because craft, artistry and creativity just seem to be in the blood,' says Blahnik. 'The process of working with your hands has never stopped there.' He was introduced to the region's expertise in shoemaking in the 1970s by the late Italian Vogue creative consultant Anna Piaggi. 'For these people, it isn't just a job, they do it because it's a rich part of their heritage and they love - and are very proud - to create beautiful things,' he says.

It's a mutual love affair. 'Signor Blahnik', as he's known within the factory, gives the staff a chance to create shoes at the most artful, fantastical end of the spectrum. Yes, the artisans here can create a handsome pair of black Oxfords - and they do - but they enjoy turning their hands to Mr Blahnik's hot-pink sandals, cow-print hiking boots, bottle-green leopard Oxfords and the twinkling decoration one artisan weaves on to his Carlton slipper (the buckle made famous by Carrie Bradshaw on her blue Sex and the City wedding heels). A row of them, freshly made, sit like the most perfect patisserie in the industrial space.

'I still get excited, after all these years, walking on to the factory floor and seeing the shoes come to life,' says Blahnik. 'Yes, there are machines and noise and it's hot, but there's something special in the air, too.'

As the sky beyond the factory streaks coral and lilac, and lustrous velvet slippers are gently packed into folds of grey tissue paper to eventually be shipped off around the world, it's hard to disagree.