As a boy in Paris he'd sneak out of school to watch the showgirls rehearse - but only so he could gaze at their footwear. Nina Jones meets Christian Louboutin, a man predestined to make the most delectable shoes.
No matter that Christian Louboutin's shoes are worn by Dita von Teese, Kate Moss, Beyonce, Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, that the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York dedicated an exhibition to his work this year, or that in January Oprah Winfrey devoted a segment of her show to introducing her 8 million viewers to Louboutin's designs. Even with all this adulation, the shy Frenchman still seems to prefer to let his shoes - rather than his own celebrity - do the talking.
"I never think about it," the 43-year-old says in his musical French accent when I ask him how it feels to be one of the best-known names in shoe design. "I am working still the same way, I have the same office in Paris and I have my Vespa ... It's just like if you were ageing 10 years. When it's your life every day, you don't see it changing."
For a designer whose shoes have gone from being a fashion insider's secret, when his first boutique opened in Paris in 1992, to being coveted by women from London to Beijing, he's surprisingly unfazed by the attention. Perhaps he is unaware of the excitement surrounding his name, seeing as he doesn't have a television and says he's "not a big magazine person". Indeed, aside from the fact that he makes shoes for the likes of RM by Roland Mouret, Marchesa, Rodarte and Temperley, he says that his own work doesn't look to fashion or celebrity for inspiration. "Everything inspires me but fashion," Louboutin says emphatically. "It's probably one of the things that least inspires me. Only when I work with designers ... Otherwise I never really think about clothes."
The tuft of feathers on the toe of a pale-yellow silk platform sandal took its cue from an egg hatched by one of the chickens on his farm in the Vendee region of France, which arrived covered in little feathers. "I thought it would be nice to almost have an egg of feathers," he says with a smile.
And he conceived of his shoes' trademark, their red soles, in an equally serendipitous manner. When his assistant was painting her nails with a scarlet nail polish, he seized the bottle and added the red polish to the sole on a drawing of a shoe he was working on.
"It was a drawing for me, (but) quite quickly it became a trademark ... I saw that it was an element of flirt," he says, explaining how his clients would often remark on how men were attracted to the red soles. "It was no longer in my hands. It happened to become my identity."
This whimsical approach to design belies Louboutin's steely work ethic. Until recently he had overseen the production of every pair of shoes since he set up his business and only last year hired someone to take over the management of the company.
"I cannot say that I have a real boundary between the moment I'm working and the moment I am on holiday. I sketch wherever I am," he says. He's also a perfectionist. "I think that's where there's a difference between my shoes and other shoes - I constantly recast, look at them, reshape. It's not only a design, it's a shoe. Meaning, if it has to be corrected 10 times, it will be corrected."
This drive isn't surprising, given that Louboutin left school at 16, upping sticks from Paris - where he was brought up in a family of four sisters by his mother and father, a skilled carpenter - to Romans-sur-Isere, the centre of France's footwear industry, to become an apprentice at Charles Jourdan's shoe factory. He'd been inspired to design shoes by the showgirls at the Paris nightclub The Palace - a haunt of Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent and Grace Jones in the 1970s. From the age of 12 he regularly sneaked out of school to watch rehearsals. "I would go to school, but I was dreaming and drifting, I was not there any more," says Louboutin. "(The showgirls) influenced me a lot. If you like high heels, it's really the ultimate high heel - it's all about the legs, how they carry themselves, the embellishment of the body. They are the ultimate icons."
A polymath who counts gardening, travel and antique hunting among his extracurricular activities, does he now regret leaving school so young? "Everyone was against me, (saying) 'You have to learn.' I thought, 'If everyone is against me, they may be right.' And then I watched TV, and Sophia Loren introduced her sister, saying she had to leave school when she was 12 but when she turned 50 she got her degree. Everybody applauded! And I thought, 'Well, at least if I regret it I'm going to be like the sister of Sophia Loren!' But I've never regretted it, actually." He grins.
Other incidents piqued his interest during his formative years. Visiting the Musee des Colonies in Paris, he saw a sign showing a high-heeled shoe with a red line through it, indicating that women couldn't wear heels on the museum's floors. Soon after he followed a pair of high heels down a Paris street, entranced, only to be shooed off by their owner's pimp.
These influences have translated into some giddily high stilettos, with heels that can measure up to seven inches (17 centimetres).
Can they possibly be comfortable? "It is important because I feel suffering to be beautiful doesn't make any sense," says Louboutin. "A shoe, it needs to be pretty, but you shouldn't suffer. Happiness is much nicer." He adds that many of his designs have a hidden platform, so, though the heel may be seven inches, "the reality is that you're perched on five inches. If you like high heels, then five inches you can walk in. People with a high arch are easily walking in them."
And while Louboutin prefers designing a vertiginous heel to a flat, he says, "I'm not a fascist. I would never oblige people to wear high heels if they don't like it." Indeed, his sisters - whom he says were an influence on his work - aren't even particularly enamoured of high heels. "They always complain that I don't have enough flat shoes," he says with a rueful smile. "They're not so much into shoes."
While Louboutin doesn't seem to distinguish between his work and private life, he does find time for some quirky pastimes. After seeing the 1987 Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire he decided to learn how to swing on a trapeze, and still has a trapeze in his studio. He trained as a landscape gardener before starting his company and is constantly working on his garden. Does he ever think about quitting his hectic schedule for a quieter life? "When you like what you do, why stop?" he asks. "I feel very privileged doing something I always wanted to do."
He is determined to keep focused on what he excels at. So far he's only veered from shoes to design a line of handbags, which launched in 2003, and is aghast at the idea of ever doing a clothing range or men's shoes. "Not interested," he says, shaking his head. "I was approached to be a clothes designer (once). I said, 'Are you crazy, why would you even consider that?' And they said, 'Well, you have a name.' " Louboutin gives a roll of the eyes. "There are so many good designers, so why would I put my name on clothes when I never wanted to do it?"
Nor is he tempted to cash in on his business. "I'm not very ambitious, in the sense that I don't wish to have five cars, 20 houses, a plane ... You sell your company if you have big needs, but there's nothing I need that I don't have," he says. "I think that, as a designer, what's coming out of my drawings is a certain sense of freedom, and losing that has a repercussion in your work. It's not a nasty thing to be free."
-- Telegraph Magazine