Funnily enough, the most difficult style to do is the plain pump because it needs to look good on a variety of feet. I compare it to having a good bone structure. Make-up will make you look good, but it helps if you have a good skeleton to begin with.
If you're passionate about the world, and if you really look closely at everything around you, each thing can be transformed into a shoe, or into a part of a shoe.
Shoes for men are about elegance or wealth, they are not playing with the inner character. That is why women are happy to wear painful shoes.
Women like my shoes because they look good on them, not because they look good on the rack.
I never was interested in being part of the fashion world - I just wanted to design shoes. I didn't even know 'Vogue' existed when I was growing up. 'Vogue,' what is that?'
People say I am the king of painful shoes.
For women raised in the '70s, high heels can still carry a stigma; they're associated with being stupid, with just wanting to please a man. Other women find them empowering.
One thing I detest, I have to say, is when a shoe is too soft, and it's molding to the foot. This is quite disgusting. And I really, really hate incredibly long shoes, where the last is very pointy, almost like Aladdin.
I was born 20 years after my eldest sister. I was the pampered child. That kind of love gives you an almost unbreakable backbone. My mother had three kids before me. She let me be completely free. I just never had anything to beat myself up over.
I always loved fish for the colors and birds for the plumage. In the same way, I loved those women of the cabaret. They were birds of paradise.
People are proud of their tattoos. It's like a modern coat of arms.
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.
I wanted to be a shoe designer, but I never thought it could be a profession. But what was the alternative? Doctor? Too dirty! Air-hostess? Maybe not! Then someone gave me a book on Roger Vivier, and, cheri, instantly I knew that was it!
I really wish I had invented the flip-flop. I love flip-flops. It's the one style of shoe I would be so proud of inventing: the Havaiana.
When I'm doing a store in a country, I always like to consider the concept of the country and the city. Ask what are the clothes of the city, what does this city represent for me?
Part of my work is dedicated to artisanship and can only be done by very few people because it requires a specific technique. Being an artist is being at the service of yourself; I am at the service of other people.
I am interested in all things that celebrate and enhance the female form.
'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.
I prefer buying things and figuring out where to put them later than regretting not buying them.
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.
