CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN

HOW I GOT HERE

Christian Louboutin is a name synonymous with imaginative shoe design. He designed for Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent, before starting his label in 1991, opening his first store for men in 2011. He sells hundreds of thousands of shoes a year and has more than 140 boutiques around the world. In conversation with Esquire’s Alex Bilmes, he looked back on where it all began.

I worked as an intern

in the Folies Bergère when I was 17. I knew the name of every single showgirl and did sketches of them all. I loved everything that was exotic and outside this very sweet comfort zone I was living in.

At school I was always a mad guy

drawing sketches, I had a collection of ugly objects that had something to do with shoes. One day a guy gave me a book from an exhibition of [shoe designer] Roger Vivier. That’s when I realised it could actually be work.

I have a school report

that says: “Excellent student, it’s just a pity he’s there once a month.” I was sleeping when I should have been at school. You have to recover from going out!

I chose to do shoes

because they’re a very small object but they reign all over your body. You put the shoe on and it changes everything: your posture, your body language.

When designing, there’s always a

loss between your imagination and the reality. But you always want the reality to be as close as possible to the first sketch. One of the prototypes I made was a bright shoe but when I looked at the sole of the shoe it was black. I was working with a girl who was painting her nails red, I grabbed the nail polish and painted the sole red and it made the shoe look exactly like my drawing.

I like the idea that shoes are a

method of communication between men and women. Shoes can be an element of seduction for a woman to a man, or a woman to a woman.