Christian Louboutin’s Couture Collection Will Have You Kicking Up Your Heels
Long before Andy Sachs, the protagonist in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, referred to her fellow Runway magazine staffers as “the clackers” because of the sound their stilettos made on the floors of the company’s lobby, Christian Louboutin had tuned his ear to the musicality of shoes.
“When I hear a woman coming, I know what kind of shoe she’s wearing,” says the French designer. (For this reason he detests clogs, whose sound he equates with the clopping of a donkey.)
Since 1991, Louboutin’s eponymous footwear line has been the go-to for fashionable women, thanks to his impec-cably pitched, often fantastical styles, not to mention those signature red soles (an internationally protected trademark).
Now, he is presenting even more rarefied pieces with the debut of his couture collection, which he’s offering to the public for the first time. Inspired by the idea of optical illusions, the made-to-order, handmade creations—which were shown at the éléphant Paname dance center in Paris this past July and are available via special order—include vertiginous stilettos with gold-plated spikes fit for a modern-day Achilles and plexiglass booties, whose embellished surface features multicolored orbs not unlike gumdrops.
It is all par for the course for a man who consistently pushes the boundaries of his imagination. “I need to be the first one challenged by what I’m doing,” Louboutin explains.
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