Christian Louboutin

I never had a plan. I have to say, I'm very shocked when people start a company and say, 'In five years I want to launch a perfume, or in 10 years I want to have this.' How can you know?

I feel I am a role model to many, not just for my designs, but also for the fact that I started my own company with the help of my two friends. I became a success story, and people relate to that.

Passage Vero-Dodat - I started my company on this passage. It feels as much home as it can!

I am very much into voices. I would say I'm a fan of voices, not of sound. I'm a fan of singers, not of bands.

I like Adele, Mika, Natacha Atlas and a beautiful old record, 'An Evening with Belafonte/Mouskouri,' starring Harry Belafonte and Nana Mouskouri. What they have in common is they all have incredible voices. I am very much into voices. I would say I'm a fan of voices, not of sound. I'm a fan of singers, not of bands.

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?

In designing shoes for myself; I'm not thinking of a specific person or catwalk. I'm just not thinking of clothes at all. I'm always thinking of a naked woman, actually.

Designing my shoes, I'm thinking timeless. Not trendy.

High heels are pleasure with pain.

In a creative business, if you're happy, it will come out in your work. I don't see how you can be happy if you don't like the people you're working with and if they aren't a joy to have fun with.

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.

The shoe is very much an X-ray of social comportment.