One standout is Christian Louboutin Shoes, with its plush gatefold cover that opens up to reveal a pop-up of a woman’s stiletto-shod legs sprouting from a red flower.

The second part of the book is all about his shoes. Each page is devoted to a stylized photo of a highlighted pair, and Louboutin continues his conversation with Reinhardt about his inspirations and design process. The shoemaker credits his Pansies series for his trademark red soles. He’d made all his shoe sketches in color — “In most cases, there’s a significant loss between the drawing and the final realization,” Louboutin says. “Because of technical limitations, the heels are never quite fine enough, or the lines never arched enough. But for the Pansies, when the first shoe came off the line, a model in pink crepe, I saw that it couldn’t have come any closer to the original drawing. And yet something wasn’t right. It took me a while to figure it out. It was because the sole was black. I grabbed my assistant Sarah’s nail polish and painted the soles red. Thanks to the color, which acted as a revelation, the original concept completely reemerged.”

The shoe that sparked all the Louboutin worship, though, was the Pigalle. A black pump in shiny patent leather with a pointed toe, five-inch stiletto and those traffic-stopping soles, they became the ultimate seduction tool, attracting women to Louboutin, and men to women.

Part Three is on Fetish, shoes Louboutin made not for walking in but to titillate and provoke. And who better to photograph such a subject matter than David Lynch, whom Louboutin met while doing a magazine article on gardens, of all things. Lynch asked Christian Louboutin Sale not to hire skinny models but full-figured nudes and Louboutin happily complied (saying that too-thin women would evoke masochism more than fetishism). The resulting erotic pictorial explores the strong link between shoes and sexual desire.

Christian Louboutin Shoes