Love about luxury Christian Louboutin Online

He is less tolerant of those who complain about discomfort. ‘Why not just wear pyjamas the whole time? When I started, women kept saying they liked the shoes but they couldn’t run in them. It drove me crazy, so I thought today I will watch how many people are running and I went all round Paris and no one was running . Don’t reject a shoe because you can’t run in it. It’s OK not to run. You see more.’Coming from a man who insists he is not interested in the dark side, christian louboutin shoes take even the casual observer on a subversive journey. There are shoes with spikes, shoes with ribbons that appear to have been sewn on to the wearer’s flesh, shoes with laces that bind the leg in something reminiscent of barbed wire – and lots and lots of studs. As for the curves, arches and pointy toes of his swooping sketches – they could be a map of the sexual act.Related articlesChristian Louboutin’s 20th anniversary capsule collectionChristian Louboutin book marks 20 years in fashionIN PICTURES: Christian Louboutin’s 20th anniversary capsule collection’Hmm,’ their creator says, tilting his chair and almost taking out the cardboard mask of Prince William pinned to the cork board behind his desk in the process. ‘I’m not a sex obsessive, that’s for sure. I’m not crazy about the tarty look. But don’t forget that Freud had a mould of a foot with an arch in his office. A foot was quite important for Freud.’

Pensée mary janes with their flower closures, from autumn/winter 2012.Several hours in Louboutin’s entertaining company confirm that despite the fetishism exhibition on which he collaborated with David Lynch four years ago, darkness really isn’t his thing. The very first shoe he designed under his own name was conceived to amuse. One New Yorker told her inquisitive husband that the Christian Louboutin who kept appearing in their bank details was her gynaecologist. Other women repeatedly buy classics such as the Very Privé, his bestselling peep-toe with the concealed platform, rather than newer designs, so they can tell their husbands it is the same shoe they have had for years.’It was 1992 and I was looking at this picture of Princess Diana taken while her husband was giving a speech. She looked so sad and bored, I thought, what would bring a smile to her face?’ The logical answer, for Louboutin at least, was the Love Shoe, a flat pump with contrasting trim which, when viewed from above, spelt the word love across the vamp of both shoes. As far as Louboutin knows, the princess never acquired a pair, but thousands of other women did. Later she gave him another idea – cleavage shoes. ‘People had a really hard time with toe décolleté back then. Especially the French. My God, you couldn’t even sell French women a sandal because they didn’t have pedicures and their feet were terrible.’ Undaunted by the national scandal of scuzzy female feet, Louboutin snipped his leather ever lower. ‘It was Diana dancing with John Travolta who inspired me. She was wearing these really bad English shoes and they showed half her toes. It looked tacky but so good somehow. She had that naughtiness and it was appearing subconsciously.’In his first year of business, he sold 200 pairs of Love Shoes, despite his little shop being at the entrance of a Parisian shopping arcade so dusty and unvisited that Louboutin would trot its length several times a day to make it seem busier. Today we’re both trotting as he leads me on a tour of his expanded empire, which now occupies numbers 12, 14, 19, 21, 23 and 27 of rue Jean Jacques Rousseau (named after the curmudgeonly Swiss philosopher who took a dim view of luxury and vanity).

A sketch for the re-issued Bow Bow shoe; right: The satin silk ruffles of of Escandria, autumn/winter 2010.Louboutin’s orange trainers, which naturally are his own design and clash stirringly with his red Anderson & Sheppard suit, slap daintily along pavements and across wonky wooden floors. There, in the showroom, hovering above a group of rapt retailers who are being talked through next season’s collection, is the trapeze swing from which, time permitting, he still occasionally dangles (he took up trapeze after seeing the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire ). Here, in the workroom, surrounded by bespoke wooden lasts with the names of Kristin Scott Thomas or Janet Jackson felt-tipped on to them, are a handful of white-coated artisans hammering, cutting and moulding prototypes and one-offs. One floor above the entrance, with its twinkling chandelier shaped like a ship from the Armada, is his garret office, the one with the Prince William mask which Louboutin wore to the leaving party of one of his English employees. Across the courtyard, in the tiny reception, are copies of the Louboutin Times , his in-house newspaper, the most recent edition of which carries a front-page story about Mrs Tependris, a fictional Louboutin junkie who claims she is ‘ruined (well just in Greece)!!!!! My houses, my planes, my boats are filled with Louboutins… I have no more space for my Titians, my Warhols, my Caravaggios, my dogs, my trainers!!!!’It’s a spoof, of course, penned by Louboutin and his friend Natasha Fraser, the daughter of Lady Antonia, but there are plenty of real-life Mrs Tependrises. Louboutin Mania has become the trophy addiction of our times. Everyone from Daphne Guinness and Arielle Dombasle (respectively the mistress and estranged wife of the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy) to Sarah Jessica Parker, Oprah and Michelle Obama has a shrine in her wardrobe to him. The author Danielle Steel apparently owns 6,000 pairs, but far more modest salaries have been splurged, several previously worn pairs at a time, on PREAPS.