How Christian Louboutin transformed women's shoes

“As a boy I would come here to travel,” Louboutin, 57, tells me, friendly and dapper in bespoke yellow checks. “For me it looked like [comic book adventurer] Tintin come to life, with these fascinating objects from China, Tibet, the Middle East. It’s where I saw my first sketch of a shoe, and a ‘No high heels’ sign from Africa for protecting wooden floors.”

A replica of that sign is placed at start of the exhibition, near a wall festooned with red high heel moulds – a paean to the red soles he debuted in 1992 after painting a sole with red nail varnish he’d pinched from an assistant.

Today, Louboutin’s eponymous brand is sold throughout the world. In Australia, where there are eight designated outlets, prices range from $975 for a classic 70mm high pump to $2445 for the Levitation, a black boot with a 100mm plexiglass heel that gives the appearance of being suspended in the air.

It is important to be open to the beliefs and influences of different communities, otherwise you remain stuck in your own little box.

— Christian Louboutin

Louboutin began sketching footwear as a teenager, in between being expelled from school, becoming a punk, enjoying stints in Egypt and India and working as an intern at the showgirl-tastic Folies Bergére. He frequented iconic Parisian nightclub Le Palace, hanging out with Grace Jones, Andy Warhol, and his friend and muse, the model Farida Khelfa. The club’s come-one-come-all aesthetic (“Gay, straight, black, white, young, old”) piqued his penchant for cultural collision.

“It is important to be open to the beliefs and influences of different communities and civilisations, otherwise you remain stuck in your own little box,” he says.

For Louboutin, those beliefs and influences traverse everything from Hopi masks and kachina dolls, jewellery and fabrics to the ancient Greeks and taxidermy.

An installation by contemporary Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi – whose spin on Mughal miniature painting includes tiny violent flourishes – sees gold high heels lying amid red paint-spilled carnage. The apparently staid 1950s wallpaper and chintz of the Molinier Room (inspired by 20th century French surrealist Pierre Molinier) is, on closer inspection, a veritable carnival of erotica: fitting for the purveyor of sexy, sky-high shoes.

“Everything relates to everything, in life, in this exhibition, in my work,” he says in his lyrical, almost whimsical, way of the many influences that have led to his work. “Proportion. Perspective. This is the way I think.”

Imagination is key for Louboutin, for whom every shoe has a personality and who often designs with entertainers in mind. A video installation by New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana – a digital fresco inspired by salient moments in his life – leads to a mirrored Pop Corridor showcasing the brand’s celebrity fans. Photos of Cher, Dolly Parton and Elizabeth Taylor jostle with those of Idris Elba, Timothée Chalamet and bouffanted drag queens wearing shiny PVC.

His work includes flats, boots, platforms and trainers, as well as glamazon heels. And while shoes are a largely utilitarian item, Louboutin has also made his fair share of “museum” pieces, completely unwearable, but beautiful nonetheless.

Of a darker complexion than his three elder sisters, Louboutin was 50 when his eldest sister informed him that his biological father was actually an Egyptian immigrant, not the cabinet-maker named Roger who’d raised him.

“I felt perfectly great about it, especially for my mother,” he grins. “Aged 42 she had a love affair and a love child. My father [Roger] accepted me, which gave me even more love for him. It was funny that I’d been loving Egypt and travelling so much before. It makes you wonder about DNA and the way of things.”

Louboutin’s sojourns have included outback Australia, where a year ago he visited indigenous communities around Uluru: “I loved the beauty of the art and the way that everything is shared, how the community is the culture, which is a big act of generosity.”

His curiosity, you feel, keeps him buoyant, going forward; he says he recognises the same traits in his twin six-year-old girls, who he co-parents with a movie producer friend.

“It will be interesting to see what they go on to do," he says. "Maybe they will act. Maybe they will love the circus and architecture like me. They could design shoes, or not. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they have inherited passion.”

He pauses, taking in the exhibition and by extension, his three-decade success story. “All of this could never have happened without a lust for life,” he says. “Passion is at the core of everything I do.”

Christian Louboutin: The Exhibition ($130, Rizzolo) by Eric Reinhardt & Jean-Vincent Simonet is out April 1.