Christian Louboutin

Hi guys,

Today I want to talk to you about a shoe designer that I really like, Christian Louboutin.

He was born in Paris and grew up in Paris's 12^th arrondissement. He has three sisters and he is half French and half Cameroonian. 

His inspirations come from showgirls and music not fashion. He began sketching shoes when he was a teenager, not really caring about school. He was in a few films and then he landed his job which was in a cabaret assisting the entertainers backstage. He was also a fixture on the city's party scene, clubbing his nights away alongside Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol.

He studied drawing and the decorative arts at the Academy d'Art Roederer. His fascination with shoes began in 1976 when he visited the Museum of African and Oceanian Arts in Paris. It was there that he saw a sign from Africa forbidding women to wear sharp stilettos from entering a building for fear of damage to the extensive wood flooring. This image stayed in his mind, and he later used this idea in his designs. "I wanted to defy that," Louboutin said. "I wanted to create something that broke rules and made women feel confident and empowered.”

Fascinated by world cultures, he ran away in his teens to Egypt, spent a year in India. Louboutin returned to Paris in 1981, where he assembled a portfolio of drawings of elaborate high heels. He brought it to the top couture houses. The effort resulted in employment with Charles Jourdan. After that he met Roger Vivier who invented the stilettos or the spiked-heeled shoe. Louboutin became an apprentice in Vivier's atelier. Louboutin designed women's shoes for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Maude Frizon. In the late 1980s, he turned away from fashion to become a landscape gardener.

But missed working with shoes and set up his company in 1991. With funds from two backers, he opened a Paris shoe salon in 1991 with Princess Caroline of Monaco as his first customer. She complimented the store one day when a fashion journalist was present, and the journalist's subsequent publication of Princess's comments helped greatly to increase Louboutin's renown.

Clients such as Diane Von Furstenburg and Catherine Deneuve followed. Later, those interested in his stiletto heels have included Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian. Sarah Jessica Parker wore a pair of shoes by Louboutin for her wedding.

Louboutin has topped the Luxury Institute's annual Luxury Brand Status for three years. Louboutin helped bring stilettos back into fashion in the 1990s and 2000s, designing dozens of styles with heel heights of 120mm and higher.

The designer's professed goal is to"make a woman look sexy, beautiful, to make her legs look as long as he can."

While he does offer some lower-heeled styles, Louboutin is generally associated with his dressier evening-wear designs incorporating jeweled straps, bows, feathers, patent leather, and other similar decorative touches. His single biggest client is Danielle Steel, who is reputed to own over 6,000 pairs and is known to have purchased up 80 pairs at a time when shopping at his stores.

Purple love,

Tiyi

Interview of Christian Louboutin with Natalie Massenet at London's Victoria & Albert Museum