Here's the thing. If you can buy identical Gap sweaters, Zara dresses, and Club Monaco pants worldwide, why do people keep touting Robson Street as the city's premier shopping locale? It's about as "uniquely Vancouver" as McDonald's, an outdoor mall with few independent fashion exceptions. Among those bright spots is hugely exclusive designer—and we'll come back to that later—Stéphane de Raucourt. It's odd meeting a person whose name appears on storefronts (1067 Robson Street and Oakridge Centre) and inside hundreds of shoes. And what shoes they are: elegant, expensive-looking (but not out of reach, averaging $300 for boots and $200 for shoes), and thoughtfully made, with no annoying doodads to spoil an otherwise clean line. A lace-up boot has timesaving zips at the side; traction soles are practical on slippery sidewalks; loafers are rewritten, still classic but subtly shaped to reflect the shape of the season. Which is not to say that this French shoe designer doesn't have his wicked side. Check those biker boots with rhinestone trim or the sky-scraping ankle-strap shoes with zips down their backs.

Shoe-making is in de Raucourt's blood. "It's a bug or disease that just got passed down," he says in his Robson Street shop, describing a Paris childhood where shoes and samples were always around. Armed with a heel-to-toe knowledge of the business, he left for Vancouver in 1986, when "Robson Street was the street," he remembers, "full of little boutiques, little restaurants", and soon a little store called Stéphane de R, which sold shoes by the pí¨re and the first collection by the fils: "Not many styles, but some came in 10 colours--red, orange, green, blue..." In hindsight, he says, "I was young, arrogant, out of touch with reality... If I'd known all the difficulties I'd run into, it would have cooled me down."

Expo 86, de Raucourt maintains, helped keep him in business, and slowly word got around. Some of his original customers still buy his shoes, he says, either at what is now his third Robson location or at Oakridge. Further expansion and a men's line might be in the cards, but right now family life (he has three children) takes precedence. He already flies to Europe several times annually and is, in fact, off to Italy (his designs are made there and in Spain) this month. While there, he explains, he will check on upcoming deliveries, confirm orders, and refine existing shoe lasts, so that close-up shots of a heel or a detail can be e-mailed back to him for approval or further work.

Europe also provides inspiration. "When I travel in Italy, I look at people, what they wear. Cities there are very fashionable. If there's something, they'll go crazy, go overboard." Ah, but remember, de Raucourt only has two stores in the world and they're both in Vancouver. Sometimes, he admits, he can be too far ahead of what his market is ready for. Sharply pointed toes, which he first introduced in spring 2001, didn't do too well. "I followed it through for winter," he says. "Now when I look at the streets, I see pointed shoes. There's a clientele that's got used to them." When he introduced the rounded toe this winter, "it was received with question marks." This spring, he'll offer both pointed and curved. Design for him is evolutionary. "There's a lot of knowledge from the previous season. We adapt and integrate new things." Does that shoe walk out of the store or doesn't it? He likes it that he immediately sees the results.

High heels still have allure for de Raucourt. "This summer and fall, we had a great heel, extremely thin..." He lifts a shoe down from a shelf, its heel not much thicker than a pencil, impossible to walk on, you'd think. Not so, he says: "Because it's well-balanced, you feel stable," even though it gives the impression of standing on a pin. The engineering is correct, he adds, which is why you could wear wider, but poorly designed, heels and feel wobbly.

So you're standing holding a Stéphane de Raucourt shoe with the man himself right there, and you think Haven't done this with Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo lately. Yet his products are arguably more exclusive than either of those ultra-high-end labels. Normally, de Raucourt only makes one pair of each size for each store, less if it's a limited edition. He uses some of the best leathers in Italy, too, with production often handled at factories that work with, let's just say some very well-known names. "The craftsmanship is the same," he says.

Snow falls on Robson Street, but in the fashion trade this is markdown time, the end of the season. By the end of January, the first of the spring line will be in his store. "There's a lot of colour--orange, yellow," de Raucourt says, adding: "It reminds me of '86."