NEW YORK — Late this spring, a successful New York personal shopper was making her way out of the semiannual Manolo Blahnik sample sale, her bag overflowing with slingbacks and stilettos, when it occurred to her that arriving two hours early was no longer necessary. "It wasn't that crowded this year," she said with a shrug. "Maybe people were traveling."

Or maybe not. These days, the social set seems to be doing a lot more credit card damage at Christian Louboutin than at Manolo Blahnik, and a bevy of A-list actresses are making the same shift. Chalk it up to overexposure or blame it on the demise of "Sex and the City," but for whatever reason, Manolo Blahnik seems to have lost some of its luster among devotees of the cutting edge.

"There will always be a couple of great heels from Manolo that grab you," said Bettina Zilkha, the author of "Ultimate Style." "What's changed is that it's two or three pairs a season now instead of the 15 to 17 you'd find a couple of years ago. With Louboutin, you walk into his store and there's just tons you can choose from. You try them on and find yourself going, ‘Can I really walk in these?' Who cares? Why not?"

Power publicist Peggy Siegal, who counts herself among the recent crop of Louboutin converts, said, "I have no idea where this guy came from. I can't even pronounce his name. But this year I just started buying them. What's that expression? If it speaks to you, buy it? Well, they speak to me."

Siegal is particularly enamored of Louboutin's trademark fire-engine red sole. "It's so cool," she cooed. "You cross your legs and everybody immediately knows you're wearing a Louboutin."

The ever-chic Sally Albemarle put it this way: "I own more Louboutins than Manolos. I guess that speaks for itself."

To some degree, the shift among the fashion cognoscenti is a testament to Blahnik's ever-ascending star. Nothing, after all, says you've hit mass saturation quite like a group of fashion snobs saying they've gotten bored with you. Thanks to his on-air spokesmodel, Carrie Bradshaw, and a client list that seemed to include every eligible actress in the Academy, "Manolos" became a brand like Coca-Cola or Nike, or, as Nina Griscom put it, a "cultural word." Women fell in love with Blahnik's shoes because they were so expensive-looking and so sexy, and they seemed to leave room for the possibility that the woman wearing them could be a Fortune 500 chief executive officer — or the call girl of one.