Even today, I am still very child-like while designing. It's a bit like Christmas - each of your designs you create is like unravelling your presents.

Cinderella is not only an iconic character when it comes to beauty, grace and fairytale love, but also shoes.

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.

People say I am the king of painful shoes. I don't want to create painful shoes, but it is not my job to create something comfortable. I try to make high heels as comfortable as they can be, but my priority is design, beauty and sexiness. I'm not against them, but comfort is not my focus.

Strangely enough, I really think that shoes are a communication tool between people.

If you do what you love, it is the best way to relax.

The higher the better. It's more about an attitude. High heels empower women in a way.

When a woman puts on a heel, she has a different posture, a different attitude. She really stands up and has a consciousness of her body.

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.

I was born in Paris in the mid-1960s, and by the time I was 12 I had started going to the movies by myself. Most of the movies of that period never appealed to me. I didn't like the 'naturalism,' the sad or the 'down-to-earth' characters. What I wanted from film was fantasy, dreams, funny situations, extravagant decor - and beautiful women.

I would say that a good shoe is exactly like a good wine. These shoes are going to stay and last for a long time.

High heels empower women in a way.

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.

Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music.

I was always shouted at by my teacher because I would draw straight on the table in the school.

There is an element of seduction in shoes that doesn't exist for men. A woman can be sexy, charming, witty or shy with her shoes.

Being on a trapeze is like dreaming. I feel totally outside of myself when I'm flying. You know, designing shoes, my imagination is flying in my drawings.

A shoe is not only a design, but it's a part of your body language, the way you walk. The way you're going to move is quite dictated by your shoes.

I'm a designer, and I think if you work in fashion, you have to give people fantasy.

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?'

I never wanted to design clothes. I never wanted to work for the fashion industry. Shoes sort of belong to the fashion industry, which is why I'm part of the fashion industry. But that's never been my thought. My thought since I was a child was really to design those shoes for girls on stage.

I never wanted to work in fashion. At age 12 or 13, I wanted to design for showgirls - for the theater! And I was crazy for the Hollywood of the 1950s: Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones. They were my idea of glamour - and Sylvie Vartan, the French singer.

At age 12 or 13, I wanted to design for showgirls - for the theater!

I'd already decided I wanted to design shoes after I saw a sign in the Museum of African and Oceanic Art forbidding high heels. Well, who could resist?

I have no problem with the idea of comfort, but it is not an important thing aesthetically. If you look at a shoe and immediately say it looks very comfortable, in terms of design, it is not going to excite me. Of course, I am not putting nails in my shoes to ensure everybody is in pain, but a heel is not a pair of slippers and never will be.