Christian Louboutin reveals he will never do a high street collaboration

Christian Louboutin is a designer who needs little introduction. For 27 years, the 55-year-old has been the sole face and driving creative force behind his independent shoe and beauty empire; his much lauded (and often copied) red-lacquered soles having shod everyone from Dame Elizabeth Taylor to the Duchess of Cambridge. Last year he sketched some 600 designs, produced 800,000 pairs of shoes at his factory in Milan and reportedly turned over £52.7 million in the UK alone. He converted the Noughties ‘It’ shoe frenzy and designer accessories boom into a global powerhouse.

Make no mistake: his is an exclusive club and entry into #Louboutinworld doesn’t come cheap.

His cult issue heels, which start at around £495, are the stuff of many fashion fantasies, and that’s the way he likes it. You’d be wasting your time holding out for a Louboutin x H&M collaboration. ‘It’s not a matter of design,’ he clarifies. ‘You can do a low-budget line with a beautiful design. My problem is that I am really obsessed with quality. It would drive me crazy.’

In this era of luxury fashion conglomerates, Louboutin is one of the few who have held out. ‘I’ve had a lot of proposals,’ he says at the mention of fierce independents such as Dries Van Noten and the Missoni family taking on outside investment this year. ‘One day I was talking to a friend who is a big banker and I said, “If you had a company, would you consider selling it?” He said, “Well, if you really need something that you can’t afford, then selling a part makes sense to make it much bigger, but if your needs don’t require you to sell, why would you?” And I said, “Okay. That’s what I’m thinking, but just checking…”’ He smiles: ‘The most important thing is freedom. So why would you give away something so important if you don’t need to?’

It’s a common theme in his work, inspired by a peripatetic lifestyle travelling between homes in Lisbon and Melides in Portugal; a house and traditional dahabiya boat in Luxor, Egypt; and further properties in Paris and Vendée. ‘I really do not understand this cultural appropriation thing,’ he says of the criticism levelled at designers taking inspiration from foreign cultures. ‘If you are asking people to not be racist, how do you explain that there shouldn’t be any mix of culture? From a very early age, culture has always been mixing. The beauty of it is when people are mixing. If you don’t mix ideas, you don’t mix people, which means that you separate every culture, and it’s unspeakable. It’s really stupid.’

In 2013 Louboutin was the first accessories designer to address diversity with his ‘Nudes’ collection, a series of leather pumps in a range of ‘second skin’ colours suited to a variety of complexions — ‘It’s a very simple idea, but more than an idea it’s a legitimate thing.’ Retailers were quick to show their support and for SS19 he’s extended the #NudesForAll range from five to seven hues, with another two tones in the pipeline.

It was only a few years ago that Louboutin discovered his own mixed ethnicity. He learned from one of his three elder sisters, after their parents had both died, that his biological father was an Egyptian builder who worked on the family’s roof, rather than the Parisian carpenter he grew up with. ‘I was surprised and not surprised,’ he says, ‘because I’ve had such a big love of Egypt. But then of course I was surprised because I thought my mother was a saint.’ He smiles. ‘In her 40s she started to have this thing. I didn’t think that she would have a lover, but I was very happy for her. Even if I loved my father. It’s really her story. My father is my father. My biological father is another thing…’

While the accessories mogul may be best known for his sexualising, gravity-defying Pigalle pumps, his love of women coupled with the sheer range of his product categories (even his fetishist spikes come in practical trainer styles and ballet flats) suggests he’s in step with fashion’s more reasonable mood. ‘I wouldn’t say that one has to suffer to be beautiful,’ he says at the mention of some of the dominatrix-inspired museum pieces that he has designed in the past. ‘I remember my first experience, not as a designer but as an intern working with showgirls at the Folies Bergère, having to buy a lot of veal meat,’ he says — the meat was used for the cushioning of the dancers’ shoes.

One trend that he has embraced is athleisure, even creating his first technical trainer for SS19. He originally designed sneakers for his male clientele — now representing 25 per cent of sales — but the women in his studio quickly requested smaller sizes. Ditto for his loafers. ‘I heard it once, twice, three, four times and after six or seven times I realised that clearly there’s a demand and my work is also pleasing people, so I thought, “Okay, fine.”’ Just as his smaller men’s sizes were being ‘kidnapped’ by women, there was a steady demand for larger sizes in his women’s stores. ‘So I thought, “I’m going to have to go all of the way to a 43 because we have a lot of demand.’’ Half men and half women,’ he adds. ‘So men want to have women’s shoes, and we have women who have big feet!’

Louboutin regularly bumps into collectors whose red sole addiction runs into the ownership of hundreds of pairs. Over the years he’s had to wage many legal battles over the copyright of his signature soles, with a recent win in June at the European Court of Justice spurring him on. ‘It’s a very important thing because it’s a trademark,’ he says of the latest ruling, ‘but I don’t like to be in legal battles. It’s stressful. It takes time and even if it is you who needs to protect yourself as you’ve been attacked, you almost look like you’re a criminal. I mean, it’s awful.’

Something of a renaissance man, Louboutin has had a lifelong passion for horticulture and interior design. ‘If there were four extra hours in the day, 28 instead of 24, I would probably add a bit of lifestyle to my work.’ He’s also an accomplished tap dancer and trapeze artist. ‘I’ve realised I’m a healthy person who just doesn’t like the idea of being healthy… it bores me,’ he smirks. When he travels he ‘used to go to very pretty hotels’, but now selects his accommodation by the length of their pools. ‘I get extracted from bed,’ he says, referring to the morning duties of his long-serving butler, Shafqat Emdad. ‘He puts a pair of goggles on me and directs me, still asleep, to the pool. I can only do sport in the morning, before I start thinking that I have too many things to do.’ If he’s in Paris his coach, who lives on the same street, rouses him at 6.45am.

As someone who has been in the business of selling self-confidence for nearly three decades, has his ever wavered? ‘You know what? Not really. But I say that with all modesty because I’ve been fortunate enough to have very loving, supportive parents. If you don’t love yourself, you won’t be able to give any love. I’m shy, but I feel confident. So I’m quite happy with the mix.’