Following the opening of his first hotel in Portugal, French designer Christian Louboutin, famous for his red-soled shoes, discusses creativity and sustainability in this exclusive interview.
"The secret to good design ? and it's a very basic answer ? is to be true to yourself," Louboutin told Dezeen. "You can take advice from people but at the end, someone has to be the boss: someone has to decide. At one point, someone has to decide to stay true [to the original idea]."
Best known for his shoe design, Louboutin's career spans more than 40 years, across which he has remained true to his creative impulses.
"The most important thing is that it looks good"
These impulses have been most recently expressed in his latest venture, Vermelho ? an opulent 13-room boutique hotel in the quiet Portuguese village of Melides, south of Lisbon, which he designed in collaboration with architect Madalena Caiado. Louboutin cites the hotel as an example of always staying true to himself. He recounts telling the team "let's have a lot of chimneys ? the kind that you see on the roofs in the south of Portugal ? because it's very nice".
The architects tried, and found it difficult, to connect all the chimneys through to fireplaces in the rooms so that they would function as flues.
"I just want the roof with the chimneys," Louboutin told them. "We don't need working chimneys. It doesn't matter if they don't go where they should go ? it's okay i...