'When people say sneakers are comfortable, I just don't find them comfortable at all," says shoemaker Christian Louboutin. "I have delicate feet so I cannot wear rubber soles for a long time, otherwise I suffocate. I need leather soles and yes, plastic is soft, but it's almost like it's intoxicating you. But that's personal."
Christian Louboutin.
The man who designs, what are hailed by some, the most glamorous shoes in the world -- namely the highly coveted Louboutin heels with the legendary red soles -- wears sneakers for 30 minutes per day at most. Yet he enjoys buying lots of colourfully painted sneakers from Chatuchak Market, even if he's never going to wear them. Beauty is the drive here.
"It's very pretty and I'm very happy to buy these sort of things, even if it's just for the looks."
His first store in Bangkok, at Central Embassy, has added fresh lustre to the city's luxury shopping scene. The shoemaker officially visited Bangkok last month, but Louboutin has visited Thailand a handful of times before. In fact, some Thai aesthetics even burrowed their way into his earliest collections, he recalls, especially Thai silk, classical roof shapes and even gold.
"I did some shoes and there were elements of wood with golden leaves. I wanted it to look like when you come to the temples here and apply gold leaves on the Buddhas. It's floating a bit because it's not completely applied and it's very nice," he said.
"I tried that but in production, you know, you can't have it floating any more."
The more you talk to the 53-year-old Parisian, the more it becomes apparent that looks and perfection are intertwined components that both chronicle his life and shape his luxury global shoe empire.
"When I see something that is badly made, even if it has a great design, I have a tendency to not want to buy it," Louboutin says.
"My father was a carpenter and he used to make things with a lot of details. So from a very early age, I've been brought up looking at the details of things. Even with my shoes -- when there is a line that is not perfect, it really affects my eyes. That's why I can't do a second line."
For this house of heels, the day where quality is compromised and prices become more affordable is never likely to come. Even with starting prices at a whopping 24,900 baht, the number of pairs sold per year is near a million. Louboutin knows how to create what women want; this he attributes to growing up in a household with four older sisters.
"Since I was a kid, I've lived in a very feminine environment, so I never felt that there were any secrets a woman had from me. As a little boy, I was not treated as a man and could see everything about women -- from the very girlie side to the very womanly side of it. I sort of had it all."
When Louboutin designs his heels, comfort is never the key to his work.
"When you have your mind on comfort, it brings you to a different direction. I don't think of the comfort factor at all when I design a shoe," the designer explains. Naturally, his beautiful sky-high heels have become iconic objects of desire for women, but beyond the looks, their true magic lies in how they can elevate the body to elegance. Consequently, more men have begun to come to Louboutin too, in search of the thrill they see on their female counterparts' faces when they slip on a pair of shoes.
"A lot of men are changing and it's not necessarily just a niche group," Louboutin said, in reference to this shift in the male population, which led to him launching his men's line in 2011.
"They want to feel that same desire and excitement. They're buying more impulsively, which is not the type of classical buying of a man who is going to keep his shoes for 20 years and gift them to his son 30 years later or whatever.
"I've never met a woman who was proud to have shoes for 20 years. It's degrading for a woman to do so, actually. But men are behaving more like this too and it's not just the gay community or entertainment business. People from sports, TV, movies, stage and musicians are all getting excited. But it's not the same excitement, because it means more for a woman -- it has to do with transforming her body. It has this importance, while with men, the importance is somewhere else. It's really about style and pleasure because you don't transform the man's body with a shoe."
While many women collect his shoes, the designer revels in his collection of Kachina dolls, pre-Columbian figures and totem statues.
"My worse is probably that I have a tendency to collect places and houses. Which is a very expensive collection!" he laughs.
It becomes apparent that beauty is a compulsion and lifestyle when Louboutin says: "I love places because I love objects and once you have objects, you want a place for your objects. I don't like to have my objects in storage. I want them out around me."
This approach crosses over into why he solidly guards what he licenses his name to as well -- "I literally never put my name on anything". The provocatively glamorous nail polish line he launched in 2014, for example, was a nod to what influenced his most celebrated creation. Around 20 years ago, a bottle of his assistant's nail polish became the catalyst to creating the famous red sole.
Louboutin's success marks him as one of the top guns in the shoe world, yet behind the brand of Christian Louboutin, its owner is simply grateful that he can now afford to tinker with more cost-intensive experiments in shoe designing and remains humbly staid.
"My goal and only goal was to design beautiful shoes. The rest sort of came along and I never thought about it, nor gave myself a real target. Let's say in 10 years I needed to have 100 stores and a million pairs of shoes per year. If I didn't, I would go crazy, end up freaking out or think I was not successful enough.
"But it's forgetting that in those 10 years that have happened to you, a lot of fantastic things happened. If you reduce it to targets and you miss your target, it's like saying you missed your 10 years for nothing. If you don't have one, every day brings new things and maybe puts you in the direction you never thought about. From my work, I have been appreciating my journey because I discovered it while it was happening. I'm very happy I didn't expect anything because when you don't, it will surprise you. That's what makes life very exciting."
The Louboutin flagship store is located at Central Embassy.
Tips to buying Louboutin
Here, Louboutin reveals the important steps to take before splashing cash on your very first pair
- Don't buy shoes after a full day of walking, because the foot expands, nor when you've just got off a plane because your foot will be swollen.
- It's best to buy during the day and not right after you wake up and head to the store. Do so on a regular day when nothing extreme has happened to your feet.
- It's not a matter of height, because mid-heels can be very uncomfortable while some high heels can be more comfortable.
- Sandals are fine, but pumps are more complicated because you don't have any room to expand in the front or back and it can get really tight.
- If it's tight, only suede and leather will eventually give in — fabric won't and will break. If you try on satin pumps, you need to be at ease when you have it on, or else you will never be comfortable.
