Christian Louboutin he asks sharply

Any awkwardness between him and Blahnik? Another baffled shrug.

He even refused to go on the Oprah Winfrey Show when she did a whole episode about how much she loves his shoes, which is as close as you can get to being knighted in Louboutin America. "They filmed the first part of the show in Paris and made me stand outside in the cold – so of course I got sick, " he says, still outraged by the cheek of it. "So then when they said, 'Come to Chicago' [where Winfrey films her show], I said, 'Are you crazy? I'm sick, my God! '"

Instead, Louboutin prefers his hobbies: landscaping (there are often plant details on his shoes), trapeze (he has a swing in his studio) and, occasionally, dancing. He recently made a film of himself tap dancing for Simon Fuller's fashion website, Fashionair, which is a vision of unselfconscious joy (and, yes, he made the shoes).

Is he a regular tap dancer? "Well, " he says with a hint of understatement, "I've got rhythm. "He has also been redesigning his Paris apartment for five years. "It's not that I'm a perfectionist, " he says, before launching into a seven-minute anecdote about how he's made the builders redo the windows three times to get the angles right. Most of all, he works: supervising the factories, having meetings around the world and then, twice a Magasin Christian Louboutin year, he will isolate himself in one of his four country houses (Egypt, Syria, France, Portugal) while he designs the new collections.

When we meet it's the first day of Paris fashion week, a prospect that does not suffuse his face with joy. "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? " he protests.

A few years ago, Louboutin was offered the job of designer at a major fashion label, though he won't say which one. "And I really was almost offended, " he says, still sounding it. "I mean, the shoe – there is a music to it, there is attitude, there is sound, it's a movement. Clothes – it's a different story. There are a million things I'd rather do before designing clothes: directing, landscaping. Designing clothes? " His face indicates his opinion of that.

Louboutin was born in 1963 and raised in Paris. His father was a carpenter and his mother was "definitely not" a high heel fan. His four sisters liked "cork wedges", he remembers, with no fondness. "Pretty much the opposite of what I do now. "Yet his taste was established in his childhood. When Louboutin was 13, he and his friends would sneak out of school to go to Le Palace, a Paris nightclub, but while his mates looked at the girls on Christian Louboutin 2012 stage, he just looked at their shoes. "Some of the shoes I make today are still inspired by the Palace – the disco look, the metal, the glitter. "

He never went to fashion or design school and instead got his training working for, among others, Charles Jourdan, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent. However, he had an unfortunate tendency to get fired: "It's because I was a terrible assistant. An assistant is supposed to assist – I always wanted to do my own thing. "He is adamant that he never had any career plan or ambition to own his own company, which I don't wholly buy. It is very hard to be successful without wanting it very badly, particularly in the fashion business, and Louboutin, for all his Gallic nonchalance, does play the game. He once decided to miss a flight back to Paris from America so he could spend two more hours in a department store autographing his shoes. "To my favourite hot housewife, " Time magazine claimed he scrawled on one customer's shoe.

Today, Louboutin shoes are known for two things: price and height. A pair of Louboutin high heels can easily cost $700 (￡465); boots can go up to $2, 000 (￡1, 325) and more. Nor are his the only ones: all designer shoes seem to have increased in price by at least 50% in the last decade, which Louboutin blames on the euro – "Everything got more expensive, even bread" – as opposed to designers simply jacking up the prices when they realised people were willing to pay them.

As well as being in the vanguard of higher prices, Louboutin is also at the forefront of higher heels, bringing stilettos back into fashion, together with all the contradictions that come with them. Jennifer Lopez once told Harper's Bazaar magazine that Louboutin's shoes "kill you. But they're the sexiest shoes around. " How can immobility be sexy?

At this point Louboutin starts talking about "the construction of the shoe" and "the direction of the weight" and all the usual noises people make when trying to claim that a high-heeled shoe can be comfortable. But the fact is, no matter what the construction, the woman is hoicked up on her toes. The argument about whether or not high heels empower women is fruitless and, after all this time, a little tired. But even Louboutin seems stumped by the contradiction. When I ask if comfort is an important factor in designing his shoes, he ums and ahs a tad: "It is important because a woman doesn't look good if she's not comfortable. But I wouldn't take it as a compliment if someone looked at one of my shoes and said, 'Oh, that looks like a comfortable shoe', " he says with distinct scorn. When asked if there is such a thing as a too-high heel, he replies, "There is a heel that is too high to walk in, certainly. But who cares? You don't have to walk in high heels. "

Germaine Greer recently wrote, citing Louboutin in particular, "While feminists have been struggling to set women free, high heels have conquered the world. ""I haven't heard that kind of idea since the 70s. Thank God that childish idea has vanished. Who said that? " he asks sharply. Germaine Greer. "Who's that? "

Christian Louboutin.