Christian Louboutin

Some people don't even know my name, but they know I am the man with the red soles.

I am very bad at drawing. Seriously. I can draw shoes. That's about it.

In designing shoes for myself; I'm not thinking of a specific person or catwalk. I'm just not thinking of clothes at all. I'm always thinking of a naked woman, actually.

Passage Vero-Dodat - I started my company on this passage. It feels as much home as it can!

I am always surprised by who wears my shoes. This is a good thing. There is no type of woman, but all my women like to feel feminine. They are women who are happy to be women.

Don't reject a shoe because you can't run in it. It's OK not to run.

My shoes are perfect for the very sexy woman who wants to be elegant.

My mother's cross was given to me when she died. I like to have it always close to me.

My father, who was a cabinetmaker, told me, 'Wood has a grain and if you go into the grain, you have beauty. If you go against it, you have splinters - it breaks.' And I took that as my view of life. You have to follow the grain - to be sensitive to the direction of life.

In Paris, I really do like to try and do nothing... but that's impossible.

The shiny red color of the soles has no function other than to identify to the public that they are mine. I selected the color because it is engaging, flirtatious, memorable, and the color of passion.

Designing my shoes, I'm thinking timeless. Not trendy.

I'll do shoes for the lady who lunches, but it would be, like, a really nasty lunch, talking about men.

I love deep cleavage on the foot. It reminds me of Berlin in 1930s, 'Cabaret.'

High heels are pleasure with pain.

Even if you don't like colours, you will end up having something red. For everyone who doesn't like colour, red is a symbol of a lot of culture. It has a different signification but never a bad one.

I prefer buying things and figuring out where to put them later than regretting not buying them.

I like to undress women - not to dress them. You know, like Manet's 'Olympia' or Helmut Newton's photographs - naked women with shoes. This is what I am trying to do.

A woman can be sexy, charming, witty or shy with her shoes.

I hate the idea of natural. For example, I prefer gardens to wild nature. I like to see the human touch. High heels are a complete invention - an extravagance. They're far from natural, but it's the impracticality that I adore. I prefer the useless to the useful, the sophisticated to the natural.