Christian Louboutin - Top of the Heels

Christian Louboutin is famously known for his staple red sole shoes, in this documentary it took us on Christian’s journey of discovering himself, his style and also the world-wide franchise that is known as Christian Louboutin.

The documentary starts on his Egyptian boat as he talks about not looking like his parents or siblings, he had dark olive skin and thick black curly hair whereas his family where all fair and had a mix of brown and blonde hair. He speaks about his ancestry and how he feels like he was adopted but on his journey of self-discovery he decided that he was Egyptian.

He was born into a world of women, being primarily raised by his mum and grandmother whilst also being surrounded by his 3 sisters. He had always been a flamboyant character and from the ages of 13-25 he used to sketch multiple designs of shoes. But it wasn’t until his mum unfortunately passed away was when he made the decision to take his designs a step further. He mentioned in the documentary that “when his mum died, he became an adult” and that if she hadn’t of passed when she did, that he would never of had the life that designing and making shoes has given him.

When he first became designer, the first thing in his mind was to create shoes for performances, he was in awe of dancers and he was particularly fascinated by cabaret as it was something constantly evolving, like his shoes. As the documentary carries on, we follow Louboutin into his work shop in Paris, he speaks about how everything is done by hand, each embellishment is glued on separately and each seam is stitched to perfection.

One of the things the truly fascinated me was when he mentioned that when he gets an order for wedding shoes, he always makes a second pair. For me, this showed how much attention he gives to a client, he knows and understands that a wedding day can be stressful, so the second pair of shoes he makes is a simplified version of the client’s initial shoe and nine times out of ten, that is the shoe that the bride wears on her wedding day!

His first memory of shoes was based off of a shoe he saw in the sign for the African and Oceanic arts museum in Paris, Louboutin said that “the sign represented a woman’s high heeled shoe with a red cross through it” and from that day, he dreamt about that shoe. It wasn’t till one day he noticed a woman with that exact shoe, his memory had been brought to life and he spent the day follow that woman around Paris, to him there was something so iconic about this one shoe that it later came to represent his own ideas when I came to women’s shoes.

His first collection was made of 3 shoes and it was called the “Love Series”, they were a part of the designs that Louboutin called the inseparables, because when the shoes where side by side, they spelled out love and could not be separated. By the end of the collection in November 1991, the Americans had seen his designs and the manufacturing of his shoes moved from Paris to Italy in order from his to sell worldwide.

The documentary takes you through Louboutin’s success, we hear from actresses and dancers who swear by Louboutin. It just shows how much time and consideration Christian takes when it comes to designing shoes even when they’re not for a celebrity. There isn’t a single part of his process that he doesn’t have an input on, from the initial design all the way to the final product. We get to see the exhibition that was held in London, and even during that he didn’t have any problem with moving sets and helping set up. The exhibition had many separate exhibits from his transparency series, which focused on making a design look like a tattoo or for the lace on a shoe to look like it comes from the actual foot than the shoe itself to an exhibit he called Fetishes.

In collaboration with David Lynch, Christian wanted to create something that wasn’t necessarily designed to walk in, but something that could be viewed as erotic. He created a series of shoes that focus on the sexualization of the foot and pictured them in models who were completely nude apart from the shoes. He spoke about how feet tend to be a fetish for some people, but he wanted to create a shoe that didn’t highlight the top of the foot or the toes, two things that are deemed as most desirable when it comes to these fetishes. He wanted to create a shoe that highlighted the sole of the foot, something that is never really seen, but a beautiful and delicate part of the foot. He created these shoes that took on a similar form of ballet point shoe, but they had a completely clear sole. In every picture the focus was never away from the shoes, even with these beautiful nude models in the background.

Something that everyone is dying to know is why the red soles? Where did the famous trademark come from? Initially whilst watching the documentary I thought maybe it came from the shoes that he saw in the sign of the African and Oceanic art museum in Paris, because of how he speaks about the red cross through the shoe. But I was so shocked to find out that it came from a small bottle of red nail polish! Christian spoke about when you’re a designer, you want something to be as close to your primary drawing as possible or even better. During one of his design processes for the classic black stiletto he received the final product but whilst reviewing it he felt that his primary drawing was so much better than this final product. For a distance he noticed one of the women in the studio painting her nails and he took the bottle of polish from her and within minutes, he created the famous red sole.