I would say that a good shoe is exactly like a good wine. These shoes are going to stay and last for a long time.
— Christian Louboutin
You need to believe in yourself and what you do. Be tenacious and genuine.
I like to see people who are survivors wearing my shoes. I am fascinated by people who can bounce back.
Fashion isn't interesting when it comes from an uninspired place. It's like voodoo; we don't want things that are soaked in blood, sweat, and tears. I adore life, and I'm very easygoing - and it shows in my work.
Some people don't even know my name, but they know I am the man with the red soles.
Born and raised in Paris, I am deeply attached to my city; we almost have half a century of love story together, where I have been truly completely faithful! The most beautiful city in the world is my city, yeepeeee!
I never had the dream to be a great designer. My focus was just to do beautiful things.
I prefer buying things and figuring out where to put them later than regretting not buying them.
I hate the whole concept of comfort! It's like when people say: 'Well we're not really in love but we're in a comfortable relationship.' You're abandoning a lot of ideas when you're too into comfort.
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.
You know, you cannot be comfortable on a high heel shoes the way you would be in sneakers. But, you know, not everyone wants to be on sneakers. Sneakers are for different purposes.
Funnily enough, the most difficult style to do is the plain pump because it needs to look good on a variety of feet. I compare it to having a good bone structure. Make-up will make you look good, but it helps if you have a good skeleton to begin with.
A shoe is not only a design, but it's a part of your body language, the way you walk. The way you're going to move is quite dictated by your shoes.
My drawing for women is really curvy. My drawings for men are actually quite angular.
I mean, the shoe - there is a music to it, there is attitude, there is sound, it's a movement. Clothes - it's a different story. There are a million things I'd rather do before designing clothes: directing, landscaping.
Shoes for men are about elegance or wealth, they are not playing with the inner character. That is why women are happy to wear painful shoes.
For me there ain't no high heel high enough.
The higher the better. It's more about an attitude. High heels empower women in a way.
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.
One moves more slowly in heels. Walking fast is neither sexy nor engaging. Nobody notices the people who race around. If you're walking in heels, you've got time. It's much more attractive.
I never liked my last name or my first name, but it's not as bad as Frigidaire, so it's fine.
I'd already decided I wanted to design shoes after I saw a sign in the Museum of African and Oceanic Art forbidding high heels. Well, who could resist?
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.
The core of my work is dedicated not to pleasing women, but to pleasing men. Men are like bulls. They cannot resist the red sole.
I am very bad at drawing. Seriously. I can draw shoes. That's about it.
I am interested in all things that celebrate and enhance the female form.
Strangely enough, I really think that shoes are a communication tool between people.
Part of my work is dedicated to artisanship and can only be done by very few people because it requires a specific technique. Being an artist is being at the service of yourself; I am at the service of other people.
Something I really hate more than anything else is clogs.
I never was interested in being part of the fashion world - I just wanted to design shoes. I didn't even know 'Vogue' existed when I was growing up. 'Vogue,' what is that?'
I'm really not a fascist. Everyone wears what they feel great in, or comfortable with. It's a beautiful day, you have an armless shirt: it goes with flip-flops.
There is an element of seduction in shoes that doesn't exist for men. A woman can be sexy, charming, witty or shy with her shoes.
The heel is engineering in itself. This little thing that supports the human weight has to have a precise balance.
People say I am the king of painful shoes. I don't want to create painful shoes, but it is not my job to create something comfortable. I try to make high heels as comfortable as they can be, but my priority is design, beauty and sexiness. I'm not against them, but comfort is not my focus.
I sketch literally all the time; constructing a collection is like building a family - you have to have a certain balance. I isolate myself - I need to be concentrated for this so I leave Paris, I leave to a place without a phone.
When a woman buys shoes, she takes them out of the box and looks at herself in the mirror. But she isn't really looking at her shoes - she's looking at herself. If she likes herself, then she likes the shoes.
Don't reject a shoe because you can't run in it. It's OK not to run.
Passage Vero-Dodat - I started my company on this passage. It feels as much home as it can!
It is extremely necessary to realize that the world doesn't only have one way of seeing things.
The thing I always try to remember is that feet are attached to the leg, and that you must prolong the silhouette. The shoe elongates the leg and does it discreetly. The goal is to get people to look at a woman's legs. It's all about the leg. No, it's not about the leg. It's about the woman.
'Comfy,' that's one of the worst words! I just picture a woman feeling bad, with a big bottle of alcohol, really puffy. It's really depressing, but she likes her life because she has comfortable clogs.
I am more feminist than feminists.
The most outrageous shoe that I had to do was a shoe where the person gave me stones - precious stones - and say that I could do anything with precious stones.
I have no problem with the idea of comfort, but it is not an important thing aesthetically. If you look at a shoe and immediately say it looks very comfortable, in terms of design, it is not going to excite me. Of course, I am not putting nails in my shoes to ensure everybody is in pain, but a heel is not a pair of slippers and never will be.
Men in high heels? That's a prosthesis. But I sympathise. Women have these giant heels. They get taller and taller. The men need help. But a man in heels is ridiculous.
When I'm doing a store in a country, I always like to consider the concept of the country and the city. Ask what are the clothes of the city, what does this city represent for me?
I wouldn't take it as a compliment if someone looked at one of my shoes and said, 'Oh, that looks like a comfortable shoe.' There is a heel that is too high to walk in, certainly. But who cares? You don't have to walk in high heels.
I really wish I had invented the flip-flop. I love flip-flops. It's the one style of shoe I would be so proud of inventing: the Havaiana.
What was called extreme 20 years ago definitely isn't extreme anymore. When I started, I remember people saying, 'Oh my God, I can't walk in that!' It was like, three inches - they look like kitten heels now.
