What should a sexy, expensive, empowering woman’s heel sound like?

Irreverent and prolific, Louboutin has created all types of shoes for both men and women. But he insists there is one type of shoe he’d never bring himself to create — not because of its appearance or its functionality, but because of its sound. “I would say just one that I really don’t like. It’s clogs,” he grimaces. “Because I think in the language of shoes there is something which is very important, too. It’s the sound. I love dance and the music of the heel is very important. When I hear clogs I don’t expect a woman — I’m expecting like, a donkey?”

In designing his namesake shoes, Louboutin did not stop at the visual or the tactile. He embraced the auditory. What should a sexy, expensive, empowering woman’s heel sound like? It should sound like all of those things. It is this attention to the sound his shoes make that makes his creations truly unique. An artisan of the design experience, he has managed to align the visual signals of his designs with aural signals and has described his thinking in terms of how his shoes should sound.

“My favorite sound is definitely mules,” he says. “If it was an instrument, it’s really ping — the touch of the black keys of the piano.”