High society: shoe designer Terry de Havilland

On his uppers: rock'n'roll cobbler Terry de Havilland in his London studio. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer

Terry de Havilland's signature Margaux shoe looks like a snake about to attack. The towering 5in wedge is 40 this year – it's a shoe that he designed in 1973 using his dad's 1940s lasts, a shoe that's been worn by stars from Marianne Faithfull to Kate Moss, one that, with its obscene curves, looks ageless. Unplaceable. As he opens his first stand-alone shop since 1979, de Havilland recalls his earliest memory of shoes: the Windmill girls, in his dad's platformed creations, ruffling his hair as he looked down at their ankle straps. It was an image that, rather than simply affecting him, branded him.

We meet the day after his 75th birthday. His Hackney studio is comfortable and shoe-lined – it smells of leather and cigarette smoke, smells that fit his longstanding reputation as the rock'n'roll cobbler. He earned the title with his hands and his nose, by day making shoes for the likes of David Bowie, the Beatles and Cher, by night having drug-fuelled parties that stretched over weeks. "You can chart the shoes I made by the drugs I took," de Havilland says matter- of-factly. He can't remember much after 1966, unfortunately, "because of the acid", and because in the 80s he had "the most expensive nose in the world", but luckily his partner of 23 years, Liz, can fill in the blanks.

De Havilland started helping his dad cut leather when he was five and, in 1960, after a brief spell as an actor (during which he changed his name from Higgins) he returned home to join the family business: "Dad got manic with winklepickers, you see – ones with huge dangerous points." Experimenting with designs, he sawed off the toes from the winklepickers' wooden lasts, but it was his fiddling with the 40s wedge that he found in the attic that began to make him famous.

One day in May 1970, working in the factory, his dad was electrocuted and died in his arms. De Havilland was back at work five days later – he had to be: business was moving faster than he could cope with. When he talks about the 70s, he talks slower, gazing off towards the sewing machines. "Three-day weeks, power cuts – but we could still party," he chuckles. Fashion was a different thing: "No prediction charts, no seasons. More schmooze than cruise." He opened a shop on the King's Road – one day a group of punks, being escorted past by police to avoid them fighting with the rockers, pointed and called him a straight. "So I?threw a pint over them." Obviously.

By 1977, he says, the party was over. Though he carried on making shoes, punk shoes, with that same winklepicker last, he didn't put his name in them for 20 years. "I missed the sex of it all," he sighs. But from glam rock to punk to the ravers of the 1980s and the "cyber goths" of the 90s, de Havilland rode the decades, making shoes for every subculture, as well as, at times, the pop mainstream. "When Geri Halliwell met Nelson Mandela," he smiles, "she was wearing our red platforms."

On Christmas Eve 2001, he had a heart attack. "And it was a wake-up call. There were more of my shoes in museums than on people's feet. We were being ripped off everywhere, and we were fed up. We got a call one day saying: 'Congratulations on doing the shoes for Miu Miu!' They'd copied us. You know, people are meant to pay homage."

The jazzy Tiffany Blue – a typically outlandish de Havilland design

After a trail of poor business decisions and licensing issues, now de Havilland is taking control again. Alongside fantastical prints, Mondrianesque grids and remakes of his 70s classics, the new collection features the Margaux in gold snakeskin. "It's a?shoe that epitomises his spirit," Liz says fondly of her husband. "It's a?shoe that has defied trends." This is still one of their bestsellers, a?shoe that people get married in, a?shoe that one customer's mother was wearing when she was born. And it keeps selling, Liz explains, partly because it's so comfortable, and partly because of the combination of the classic profile and "freaky details".

"It's difficult to re-break a brand, but with the shop we're going to try, because without a?shop, where are you? It feels like the right time to return," de Havilland says. "That 70s depression is back; everything's 50 shades of bloody grey. We need colour. We need an antidote to this weather, to this attitude. Yeah, it feels right. It feels right."

The Terry de Havilland store is open at 8 Ganton Street, London W1, until mid-July (tdhcouture.com)

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