Having firmly been a “flats” kind of girl, the other kind of woman — the “high heels” lady, has always interested me. I tend to look on these beautiful women, who invariable have a sinuous grace and slinky sense of style, as creatures from outer space: a place where you never come in contact with badly paved roads, crowds or the necessity for public transport. Of course, knowing that I can never be part of this group myself, my admiration for what these women are capable of, has only increased over time. And so it was, that when the granddaddy (though he’s a distinctly young 50) of all heels vertiginous came to Mumbai, to participate in a talk on luxury design at the India Design Forum, I knew I had to be there. Chritian Loboutin’s red lacquered heels have been sported by some of the most beautiful women on the planet, and a chance to hear him discourse on creating his sinfully seductive stilettos wasn’t to be missed. Fashionista Bandana Tewari introduced Louboutin to the audience: A bald man of medium height, nattily dressed in a striped jacket, bright red wristwatch and smart loafers, with all the demonstrativeness one expects from the French. He explained why he had focussed on the humble shoe to express himself. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as scale when it comes to design,” he said. “As a young man, I would observe the women when they would come to a shoe store. They would put on the shoes, walk to the mirror, see how it made them look, then turn sideways and check how it made their bottom look — no one ever just sat on a seat and flung up their feet to see what their shoes looked like!” Apart from being inordinately beautiful, a Louboutin shoe is also inordinately expensive, but the designer had a Gallic analogy to offer: “When you have two bottles of wine, they both look nearly the same, and they have the same quantity of wine. Yet, you pay a lot more for one bottle than for the other. We know the difference between a good wine and a bad wine — it’s the same with shoes. A lot of detailing goes into each of my creations.” Louboutin’s designs constantly push the envelope in terms of just how tall you can stand in them, pointed out Bandana (wearing studded high heels herself). Did he attempt to balance style with comfort? “My designs are not about comfort!” he shrugged. “I feel happy if a woman tells me that she finds my shoes beautiful. If she were to tell me that she found it comfortable — I would not be happy.” Then he recounted how many women came to him after the 9/11 attacks in the US and requested him to design shoes with medium heels — just in case they needed to run if a similar catastrophe were to occur. “But it makes no difference if you’re wearing two-inch heels or five-inch heels — what has to happen will happen!” was Louboutin’s response. There were many more questions for the celebrated designer from the audience: How do you keep your ideas fresh? (“I keep them in the fridge!”) What’s the difference between designing shoes for men and women? (“Men are almost feminine in their attitude towards shoes — they polish them, look at them. They look at the shoe as an object, not as an extension of themselves.”) And at the end of the session, the audience was charmed. So was I. Should I try once again to be “well heeled”, I wondered. Should I practise balancing myself in shoes perhaps not as comfortable as my slippers, but infinitely more delicate? As I made my way out of the auditorium that evening, I happened to see Bandana Tewari sitting on some stairs just outside the door. I snuck a peek at her feet — she’d changed out of her stilettos, and into black, no-nonsense flats.