Photograph courtesy Eva Ionesco

Women love high heels because it makes them look different — it adds to their body language. it illuminates and enlivens the whole body,” says Christian Louboutin, the Frenchman known the world over for his over-the-top stilettos with their trademark red soles. The shoes have hooked divas from French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy to Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker.

And now Delhi’s DLF Emporio, home to top-notch international brands, is abuzz as Louboutin has just set up shop there in his brand’s 20th year. “I have a very natural love for high heels,” says the 48-year-old designer. His definition of high heels loosely translates to five-inches while the super-high heels will take you soaring six inches off the ground.

At the Emporio store, price tags go from a rock bottom Rs 31,500 — for a pair of patent leather Pigalle pumps — to Rs 1,74,500 for the blingy Fifi Strass. There’s also the Mexibeads pumps with multi-coloured beads at Rs 1.32 lakh. Here, it’s the vibrant shoes and strass-covered pairs that have been attracting customers.

The Spring Summer 2012 collection has India-inspired numbers like Bollywoody and Devidas. The former’s a suede stiletto with Lurex embroidery and strass, while Devidas is its black suede cousin with a broader heel.

But then, the Indian imprint isn’t new in the world of Louboutin. Everything from saris and handicrafts to Bollywood posters have left their mark on his designs. One of his first collections had a shoe with the fabric on it draped like a sari. “I have a very nice picture, for instance, of our First Lady sitting on a couch almost naked — when she was a model — with this shoe called India. This was probably 15 years ago,” he says.

So what made him finally debut in India? “The reason is my love for this country,” says the designer, who visited Mumbai and Goa in 1979. He returned for annual visits over the next four years.

“Women have an addiction for shoes and I’m a bit of a doctor in that I’m providing the addiction but I’m also curing it,” he says, adding that a “good doctor” never reveals his patients’ names.

So what’s with the red soles? “All my sketches in ‘92 were under the spell of pop art and sported bright colours but I felt something was missing in the actual shoe,” he recalls. When it dawned on him that the culprit was “the big black sole”, he grabbed the red nail polish off an assistant who’d been painting her nails and smeared it on the sole of a shoe. Nothing like a flash of crimson to set things rolling.

2012 marks two decades of brand Louboutin. It’s a brand story with lots of sole and even more heel.