By Sakhshi Mahajan
“Heels play an architectural role for women as a pedestal. A woman can be sexy, charming, witty or shy with her shoes. Shoes for men are about elegance or wealth; they are not playing with the inner character. That’s why women are happy to wear painful shoes. For some a little discomfort is balanced by something else, which has to do with desire. You feel yourself, empower yourself, know yourself. You are aware of your body. This little act of discomfort pays off in lots of other ways.” Christian Louboutin
The feeling a woman gets when she walks into a room wearing a stellar pair of heels is inexplicable. Personally, I am not a huge fan of these towering structures because my threshold of pain is low. Nonetheless, I have felt incredibly sexy wearing heels with an outfit; they’ve been a catalyst in building my confidence. And if there’s a name that’s synonymous with beautiful heels, it’s Christian Louboutin. Christian Louboutin’s Retrospective at the Design Museum in London celebrated the career of the extraordinary shoe-designer, who has pushed the boundaries of high fashion shoe design. As someone who had a chance to attend the exhibit, I can say that it was proof of the fact that shoe design is a science and an art, and that Christian has- technically and aesthetically- mastered this medium! Exploring Louboutin’s design process, visitors were taken on a journey through every stage of his career, revealing how a shoe is constructed from the initial drawing and first prototype through to production in the factory.
Louboutin was born in Paris and was from a very modest background; his father was a cabinetmaker, and mother a homemaker. He did not complete school and left his home at the age of 12. Theatre and Parisian cabaret were his key inspirations for becoming a shoe designer. He was intrigued at “how girls effortlessly performed in high heels”. He got his first job at the age of 14 at the Parisian music hall, ‘Folies Bergere’, where he assisted entertainers back stage and often sketched shoes for them. He was also a regular at different Paris nightclubs and partied with Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol. Besides Parisian cabarets, Louboutin was an avid traveler and collector. Between the age of 15 to 21 he traveled to India every year and Indian influences are predominant in his work. He was also fascinated by exotic Middle East.
Louboutin had no sense of minimalism; he needed objects around him in order to get a creative rush. He collected objects, posters and furniture in markets and bazaars to adorn his atelier and boutiques. He also had a poster of the 1980 Bollywood movie, ‘Jazbaat’ in one of his studios.
Jazbaat Poster in Louboutin’s Studio
In 1976, Louboutin visited the Musee National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Oceanie and noticed that women were forbidden from wearing sharp stilettos to enter the building for the fear of damaging the flooring. This experience had a long lasting impact on him and he “wanted to create something that broke rules and made women feel confident and empowered.” A few years later he assembled a portfolio of drawings and showcased them to various designers, landing a job with Charles Jourdan- a very famous French shoe designer. He also assisted Roger Vivier, a renowned name in shoe couture who is known for his creation of stilettos. Louboutin went on to being a freelance designer for brands like Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel; in 2002 he designed shoes for YSL and it was the first time a designer associated his name with another designer as “Loubotin for YSL”. He opened his first shoe Salon in 1991 and today he has around 45 stores all over the world.
He treated his work as art and like Roger Vivier, he called them “sculptures”. The most fascinating collection is his ‘Fetish’ series, an exhibition that he did with the filmmaker David Lynch. The show featured five limited edition pairs of shoes by Louboutin alongside five signed photographs of the shoes by Lynch. A culmination of his varied influences, this particular series surpassed all boundaries of shoe design! These shoes weren’t intended to be worn, so he threw practicality and comfort out the window while designing them, and pushed shoe design to its limits with 26 cm heels, spikes on the inside and sole of the shoe and by creating exquisite ballet heels. The idea was that the shoe becomes a fetishistic object, transcending the most beautiful part of the foot.
DAVID LYNCH PHOTOGRAPHS
FETISH SERIES
Christian also draws creative influence from women in different industries. One of my favorite is the series inspired by Marlene Dietrich, a German American actress and cabaret star known for her sex appeal, gusto and guts, and many have emulated her attitude and style. Dietrich inspired Louboutin’s ‘Tsar’, ‘Lili Marlene’ and ‘Maralena’ {crystal-embellished mesh peep-toe pumps}. Christian believes the ‘Maralena’ is “like a woman who has simply thrown onto her nude body a veil of precious stones”.
The ‘Maralena’ Shoe
Singer Tina Turner also inspired him because he felt “there’s the top, her heart and soul which come through her voice, and bottom, all her sexuality and animal nature which emerge through her legs.” He has designed a series of heeled boots and named them after her.
Footwear for Louboutin exemplifies good design. He always sketches before he executes and tries his best not to deviate from the original design. In his opinion “the vision of the silhouette can evoke a very different feeling than the shoe in reality”. The world knows about Louboutin’s red lacquered soles, which incidently wasn’t an intentional marketing gimmick but more the result of an accident.
Guess when you are pure genius you can be honest!
You can have a look at Christian Louboutin designs at Emporio Mall, Vasant Kunj in New Delhi.
The most classic version | ‘Pigalle’
Christian with Eva Lonesco
The Collection
