Christian Louboutin

The shiny red color of the soles has no function other than to identify to the public that they are mine. I selected the color because it is engaging, flirtatious, memorable, and the color of passion.

Everyone has their dates. For me, it's 1991. I can place every memory of my life either before or after this date. It's the year I became an adult. My mother died, and I created my company shortly thereafter.

A lot of my friends have tattoos; I realized that it's not only just a part of pop culture, but a bit of a map on someone's body, which says something about people. A part of their life, like an armor or a crest.

Everyone has their dates. For me, it's 1991. I can place every memory of my life either before or after this date. It's the year I became an adult. My mother died, and I created my company shortly thereafter. I definitely would not have done it if she hadn't passed away.

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.

Necessity creates everything in my life.

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.

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.

I never had the dream to be a great designer. My focus was just to do beautiful things.

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.

You know, I'm behind my company. My company has been a big part of my life. And it's not that I been buying a company or that my father bought a company and tried to do something out of it. You know, it's not the same thing. It's my name, it's my company, it's my signature.

My business partner gave me a drone, a small helicopter you pilot with an iPhone, and also it has a camera so you can see what it sees on the iPhone. Great fun. I fly it outside in Portugal. It's wonderful to oversee gardens.