He has partnered with other organizations for projects including limited edition pieces, gallery exhibits, and a custom bar.

But instead of feeling it was terrible and that I was an outsider who had to go and find my real family, I invented my own history, full of characters from Egypt, because I was very into the pharaohs.

[9][10] Louboutin was expelled from school three times and then he decided to run away from home at the age of 12,[11] at which point his mother allowed him to move out to live at a friend's house.

[12] Louboutin's passion for designing shoes started at a young age, overshadowing his interest in academics and leading him towards a successful career in fashion.

Going through a punk phase, he was in a few films, including the 1979 cult classic Race d'ep and The Homosexual Century, which attracted an English-language audience.

Louboutin says his fascination with shoes began in 1976 when he visited the Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie on the avenue Daumesnil.

It was there that he saw a sign from Africa forbidding women wearing sharp stilettos from entering a building for fear of damage to the extensive wood flooring.

Subsequently, Louboutin met Roger Vivier, who invented the modern stiletto, or spiked-heel shoe, and the chrome-plated buckle pump.

In the late 1980s, he turned away from fashion to become a landscape gardener and to contribute to Vogue but missed working with shoes and set up his company in 1991.

Later, those interested in his stiletto heels have included Christina Aguilera, Joan Collins, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Tina Turner, Marion Cotillard, Nicki Minaj, Gwyneth Paltrow and Blake Lively.

The Luxor house is a former craftsman's workshop, made of compressed earthen bricks, to which he has added an additional floor and a rooftop belvedere.

[27] Louboutin helped bring stilettos back into fashion in the 1990s and 2000s,[28] designing dozens of styles with heel heights of 120 mm (4.72 inches) and higher.

[29][30] While he does offer some lower-heeled styles, Louboutin is generally associated with dressier evening-wear designs incorporating jewelled straps, bows, feathers, patent leather, red soles and other similar decorative touches.

[34] The red sole is protected as a trademark in several countries, and litigation has taken place in various disputes in which Louboutin claimed infringement of its rights.

[40] In 2011, Christian Louboutin company filed a US trademark infringement claim of its red-soled shoes against designer Yves Saint Laurent.

[42] However, in August 2011, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero denied the firm's request to stop the sale of women's shoes with red soles by Yves Saint Laurent.

"[43] In his thirty-two-page decision, Judge Marrero compared fashion designers to painters and noted how creativity for both is dependent upon using color as "an indispensable medium" that "plays a unique role."

The Court observed that: "The law should not countenance restraints that would interfere with creativity and stifle competition by one designer, while granting another a monopoly invested with the right to exclude use of an ornamental or functional medium necessary for freest and most productive artistic expression by all engaged in the same enterprise.

Most of the footwear is manufactured and produced at his factory in Milan, but he also maintains a small atelier on Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for private customers and one-of-a-kind creations.

[53] The second story was that the idea of starting a men's line came from musician Mika, who asked Louboutin to design all the shoes for his show for his tour.

The range was more widely distributed on 6 August 2014 to Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and select Sephora boutiques.

Much like the shoes, the polish is receiving attention for its provocative shape, a long spiky cap, designed to resemble a calligrapher's brush or a spire.

He partnered once again with Lynch and Swizz Beats to compose music when Louboutin directed a show at the Crazy Horse, called Feu, which ran from 5 March to 31 May 2012.

[63] In 2012, he was commissioned by Disney to create a modern-day Cinderella-inspired pair of slippers limited to just 20 pieces, to complement release of the Cinderella: Diamond Edition Blu-ray Combo Pack in the fall.

[67] In 2013, Louboutin was celebrated at Toronto's Design Exchange[68] with a comprehensive exhibit featuring themes of showgirls, fetish, construction and travel.

[74] Above a steel awning shaped like a Louboutin shoe in profile, with a red underside to boot, pink orchids sprout from the coral-stone facade.

Dutch artist Madeleine Berkhemer recycled pantyhose into a multi-colored sculpture that stretches over the empty concrete floor with some of Louboutin's shoes dangling in the overhead tangle of nylon "like insects trapped in a psychedelic spider's web.

[73] Hieroglyphics, symbols and Braille are carved onto wooden Codebox Tiles that line some of the store's interior walls,[75] hiding the words of a poem by contemporary American poet Lyn Hejinian in plain sight, in the etched wooden tiles lining the gallery wall behind the orchids.

[74] These coded tiles appear in many Louboutin stores designed by Clough around the world, including São Paulo, Brazil.

[81] In the last few years, the company has served hundreds of DMCA notices on Google to remove many sites selling fake goods from their search results.