TO WEAR HIS STEP SHOES IS TO INTO A WORLD OF UNABASHED YET POWERFUL FEMININITY

show the shop to her friend. She already had come before, but I wasn’t there at that time, on her way to her decorator nearby. So I took the journalist to my office at the back, and she didn’t tell me but she was very impressed to see someone so high profile in such a new store. Her article came out in January or February and people came because of that article.” Louboutin and Princess Caroline of Monaco have since become very good friends, and they often have a good laugh reminiscing about that fateful day. “She says she’s a good salesman anyway! Because she was in the store and she basically sold the entire store to her friend!” Louboutin may have had his fairies, and no small measure of luck, but he is also extraordinarily talented, with an innate sense of what women want on their feet, whether walking on the street or lounging in bed. As for his own feet, he wears his own shoes from his menswear line, Nike and APL for running, and for everything and everywhere else—he confesses a love for Havaianas. “My biggest collection is really Havaianas. And you know what, they’re beautiful pairs of shoes, with a beautiful design.” The inspiration is classic, too, he says. “You can see the earliest representation of a thong in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, it’s one of the sandals from the tomb of Tutankhamun. The first thongs were made with a sole of rotin [rattan] and then a woven bridle. You see, the original design of all these shoes all came from the same place— ancient Egypt.”