One moves more slowly in heels. Walking fast is neither sexy nor engaging. Nobody notices the people who race around. If you're walking in heels, you've got time. It's much more attractive.

I perfectly understand the obsession with shoes. I myself am pretty obsessed. I have a few hundred pairs of shoes in general, because I've been collecting shoes for a long time.

[While designing] I'm mixing two lines of thought really: me as a designer for women and then me as a man. At the start of the design process it's the designer for women that comes to the forefront - sketching and revising the silhouette. Then the man comes into the picture - and I look at the shoe from a very masculine point of view. Then there is a conflict between the two sides of me. Sometimes the man wins, and sometimes the designer wins.

I like to see people who are survivors wearing my shoes. I am fascinated by people who can bounce back.

People ask me all the time, 'How can I walk in these heels?' I answer with the best compliment I remember that came from a woman who lives here in Paris...I know my street much better. Heels permit me to take the time to look at the architecture of my street. Now I take time to look at things.' High heels give you time to think, to look at your surroundings- a camel has seen more in life than a very quick horse! Women should live to rhythm of high-heeled shoes!

I like to undress women - not to dress them. You know, like Manet's 'Olympia' or Helmut Newton's photographs - naked women with shoes. This is what I am trying to do.

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.