When I met Christian Louboutin, he’s wearing a traditional short-skinned papakha hat, purchased on a recent trip to Georgia. He was there a couple of weeks ago, he tells me, for a birthday party. ‘It’s beautiful. The food is delicious. The churches are beautiful. Beautiful museums. The city of Tbilisi is incredible,’ he explains to me animatedly. In all other respects, Louboutin comes across as pretty low-key. He’s not particularly tall, his manner is unassuming. And yet, as we go on to shoot his portrait for this story, I remain utterly mesmerised. Between the hat and the flowing Georgian coat he’s wearing (another acquisition from his trip), he cuts a uniquely striking figure; almost regal. Although, perhaps, that is to be expected. He is the king of the killer stiletto, after all.
During the 2000s and early 2010s, Louboutin’s high heels became the ultimate footwear status symbol, instantly recognisable by their trademarked (yes, it’s legally protected) bright-crimson sole. The heels became shorthand for top-tier luxury and cultural capital. But then trends shifted: sneaker culture took hold, streetwear invaded the high-fashion runways and women shunned heels in favour of more comfortable flats. The pandemic seemed to be the final death knell for the stiletto, as global stay-at-home mandates left no occasion to break out the sky-high heels.
Now, though, the Louboutin heel is enjoying a buoyant resurgence, with Gen Z catapulting the red-bottomed shoes back into the spotlight. Zendaya is rarely seen on the red carpet without a pair of Louboutin So Kate stilettos on her feet. Addison Rae, meanwhile, almost never takes hers off, even rehearsing for performances in them. Dua Lipa just got married in a pair (Miss Z pumps were her style of choice), while Ariana Grande is performing in hers during her world tour, as I write this very article. Tyla, too, more often than not turns to her trusty red-soled heels.
It’s the kind of marketing success story that luxury brands pay big bucks to achieve. Not Louboutin. ‘I didn’t try to be part of pop culture,’ he says. But when major rap stars like Cardi B sing about their expensive red-bottom shoes, it can’t help but give the brand cultural cachet. The designer sees the crossover happening within a bigger ecosystem, “which has to do with design, with desire, with sexuality somehow, femininity… but also freedom”. He pauses. ‘It’s very much attached to freedom,’ he says. “That makes me very happy.”
Louboutin has always let passion guide his internal compass. Many stalwart fashion figures start out with dreams of running a global empire, driven by laser-focused ambition and long-term business plans. But Louboutin’s path was more tangential. After his first gig in fashion, he left to become a landscape gardener. “I always thought, go where life is taking you. I’m not a perfectionist. I want to do things well, but I don’t want to have to lead my life with such pressure,” he tells me after the shoot, over a cup of tea. It was a lesson he learnt from his father, a carpenter, who taught him that when working with wood, you have to follow the direction of the grain; try to work against it, and you’ll end up with splinters. Louboutin took it as a philosophical lesson: go with the flow of life and respect where it’s going to lead you. “I realised after a while that the sky is the limit if you [set] no limit. Things may be way more interesting if you’re not driving them.” Luckily, he found his way back to designing shoes and a childhood passion for sketching high heels turned into a global footwear empire, which in 2021 was valued at €2.25 billion.
I’m not a perfectionist. I want to do things well, but I don’t want to have to lead my life with such pressure
Even though Louboutin didn’t aspire to work in fashion when he was younger, one of his favourite pastimes was sketching heels. He had a very happy, if atypical, childhood, growing up in a working-class family in the 12th arrondissement in the eastern outskirts of Paris with his father Roger, stay-at-home mother Irene and three older sisters. Bored with school (“By 13, I had no enthusiasm for it anymore,” he says), he instead spent his time going to clubs, watching 1970s Bollywood and Egyptian films at the local cinema and exploring the Museum of African and Oceanic Art close to his home, passions that ignited his love of travel and different cultures. “I discovered the world was bigger than my neighbourhood,” he explains.
He would often sneak into Folies Bergère, the famous cabaret music hall in Faubourg-Montmartre, too. “I was obsessed with showgirls,” he says. “I would go to the music hall often with my best friend of the time, and we would sneak in. My favourite thing was the musicals, so I thought I should draw shoes for these girls.”
A sense of wanderlust fuelled his early twenties, which he spent travelling the world from Egypt to India. He funded his travels by working – internships at Charles Jourdan in Paris and freelance work selling shoe sketches to houses including Chanel and Saint Laurent. “My thing was, I make some money, I travel for two months, I come back, I draw, I make some money, back to travelling,” he says. Then he landed a job as an assistant to Roger Vivier, supporting him with a few projects, including a retrospective of his work in Paris. “After that, I thought, I’m not going to work with anybody else. No one was going to give me any enthusiasm versus what I had with Roger, whom I adored. ” That was when he decided to take up gardening.
My favourite thing was musicals. I was obsessed with showgirls, so I thought I should draw shoes for these girls
Restlessness brought him back to shoe design. “I realised you need a lot of patience to do a garden; in 10 years it’s going to start looking good. When you’re 26, you’re like, ‘But I will be dead in 10 years!’ So I ended up thinking, it’s too long.” Believing he would never work for someone as inspiring as Vivier again, he decided to work for himself. And with that, he opened his own shop in Galerie Vérot-Dodat in 1991.
His iconic red sole was born a couple of years later, when the designer saw a model he was working with painting her nails red. “It came from the fact I wanted to stay really close to my drawings. I was sketching things with bright colours, thinking of 1960s serigraphy and pop art,” he says. In contrast, his shoes had big black soles, visible from behind. “I realised that there is no black in my drawings, I have to erase the black. So I ended up grabbing the nail polish and actually painting it red.”
This joyful spontaneity sits at the heart of Louboutin’s brand. One of his favourite films when he was a kid was a 1960s musical called Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, about two twin sisters who “just don’t care. They’re very feminine, very playful,” he says. “You can be serious and frivolous, and to me that’s a very important mix.”
It’s a formula that ensures his shoes remain bestsellers, even after all these years. “Louboutin has never compromised its creative vision in pursuit of trends. From the iconic red sole to the unmistakably feminine silhouettes, every design reflects a singular point of view that is instantly recognisable around the world,” explains Tiffany Hsu, chief buying and group fashion ventures officer at Mytheresa, who notes that the brand is an ‘exceptional performer’ for the retailer. “At the heart of the brand: Louboutin himself, a visionary creative whose imagination, charisma and unwavering passion continue to infuse the house with relevance and vitality.”
“What continues to set Louboutin apart is its unmatched creativity and willingness to push boundaries,” agrees Josie Gardner, head of accessories and shoes at Harrods. She points to the spectacular theatrical experiences Louboutin hosts during Paris Fashion Week as an example, recalling a particularly memorable contemporary take on a 1950s-style Hollywood water ballet, performed by the French Olympic artistic swimming team while wearing Miss Z heels. “The brand consistently delivers a sense of excitement and fantasy that captivates its audience while reinforcing its unique position within the luxury market.”
Louboutin’s heeled shoes are notorious for prioritising style over comfort (see the viral video of Zendaya’s stylist Law Roach explaining how she trained herself to withstand the pain of her go-to red carpet So Kates). Louboutin himself has spoken publicly about how, as a designer, comfort is not his priority – the look of the shoe is. It comes as a surprise, then, to learn that the designer has spent the past four years working to ‘perfect’ his La Pigalle shoe, which is relaunching after it first debuted more than two decades ago, re-engineering the style to make it easier to wear. “It’s the same silhouette, but when you wear it, it’s a totally different shoe,” he explains. “Comfort has become a reality and also a way that people want to feel. It’s not necessarily just about walking in your shoes but also having a comfort zone when everything has become so aggressive.” Although, he then adds, “How can you do a high heel if you’re thinking comfort? That’s not going to happen.”
