Christian Louboutin on shoes, lipstick and the freedom to dream

The shoe designer du jour, Christian Louboutin, is making an unlikely foray into lipstick, not partnered by one of the globe’s big beauty houses, instead by an American independent. It’s the kind of thing you can do when shoes have made you rich enough to answer to only two childhood friends and your own creative dreams.

Marion Hume

Aug 28, 2015 – 12.15am

Email LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber?

Consider the time-frame to be as finely balanced as a spike heel. It’s early morning in Paris. The Eurostar was on strike yesterday – I was late in from London, Christian Louboutin late home from Brussels – and taxis are on strike today. The venue: his glorious rooftop apartment, which is packed with treasures that suggest a magpie traveller. The plan: to grab this sliver of time as narrow as one of his 170-millimetre heels, in which to discuss the shoe business – in particular, his shoe business.

Slender of frame, wide of smile and possessor of elegant feet – this noted because today, chez lui, he is not wearing any shoes – the 52-year-old has built his reputation on an unerring belief in the beauty and power of the high heel. He is probably the world’s most famous shoe designer. There are others, but Manolo Blahnik has a smaller business and Jimmy Choo, which long ago ceased to be the work of the man himself, a far lower penetration on social media.