Our colleagues at CNN have provided us with two videos featuring the legendary Christian Louboutin, who recently spoke with Sara Sidner for Talk Asia.
   Louboutin discusses how he had no formal training, his trade-mark battle with Yves Saint Laurent, and the most ‘outrageous’ shoe he has ever made, a ruby-encrusted sandal.
   On his famous red-lacquered soles, Louboutin tells Sidner: ‘I have a girl in Italy who’s trying on the shoe and she was painting her nails. So I grabbed her nail polish, and then I painted the sole. It really popped and it was exactly like my drawing. I thought, “Oh it was as simple as that.” It’s really a matter of colour. So I thought, well, every season I’m going to have a coloured sole. But then what happened immediately after, [was for my] first season I did the red sole, and immediately it became a signature.’
   In a nod to CNN, he also discusses his Sea.nn high-heeled boot with pockets for a cellphone, credit card and pen, which has now been worn by Rihanna and Rita Ora. ‘I thought, at one point, to do a shoe where it’s a girl would be a journalist covering like war or things. She would have to be streetwise, she would have to be quick, but she would have to have a lot of animal. So, it’s a high-heeled boot, so it can be seductive. And it can be helpful to be seductive in any type of situation,’ says Louboutin in the interview.
   Louboutin also feels justified charging more, because of the quality of his product. ‘So, why there is a difference? Now, you take a bottle of wine—75 cl—that shape. You take another bottle of wine, same shape, red wine again, 75 cl. The price goes from one to 10 times the price. Everybody,everyone can understand. You have cheap wine, and then you have more expensive wine. An example of a shoe like this, for instance, it will stay on the last much more than a day … But once a woman puts it on, she just feels it and she knows about it. It’s exactly like a bottle of wine.’
   In the UK, Talk Asia airs Friday, August 17, at 10.30 a.m. BST (9.30 a.m. GMT), Saturday, August 18 at 1 and 11.30 p.m. BST, Sunday, August 19 at 6.30 a.m. BST, Tuesday, August 21 at 1.30 and 8.30 a.m. BST, and Thursday, August 23 at 5.30 a.m. BST.