The Sole of Sexiness.(shoe designer Christian Louboutin )

Jennifer Lopez drapes languidly across the December cover of Harper's Bazaar tacked to the bulletin board in Christian Louboutin's Paris headquarters, kicking up her scarlet-soled silver strap sandals. "She looks so great there, doesn't she?" asks the 39-year-old French shoe designer. "She's by far the best." The feeling is mutual. Louboutin's towering creations, Lopez says, are her "biggest weakness." Her current favorite: black suede pumps with a white bow and spike heel. "They kill you," she told Bazaar. "But they are the sexiest shoes ever."

No one will ever mistake them for sensible. With his witty, wicked designs made of Charvet tie fabric, clear plastic and black lingerie lace--all with his signature red soles--Louboutin has helped lure women everywhere back into pointy-toed high heels and sole-slapping mules. His regular clients include Queen Rania of Jordan, Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and the world's most famous shoe fetishist, former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos. But his influence is far more sweeping. "Louboutin makes flirty, saucy footwear, and he's the only one who does it with real polish and elegance," says Sally Singer, fashion news/features director for American Vogue. "He brings a real sexy Frenchness to shoe design."

It didn't happen overnight. When Louboutin reintroduced stilettos in the early 1990s after a 20-year feminist-imposed moratorium, women cried that they couldn't run in them. "But I ask you," he says incredulously, "who runs at work?" Louboutin credits women's reacceptance of high heels to Madonna, who wore them day and night, even onstage. "After Madonna," he says, "there was no more debate." But there was still the battle of the mules. "When I started doing mules 10 years ago," ...