It’s shoetime!
Iconic heels go on display
CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN shoes don’t so much beckon the limelight as revel in it. The heels are high, the pumps bedazzled and the iconic red soles inject even the safest looks with a slash of sauciness and subversion. No surprise, then, that when a new exhibition opened in honour of the designer last week, kicking off Paris Fashion Week, it was a suitably glamorous affair. Juliette Binoche, Dita Von Teese and Janelle Monáe (all of them in their Louboutins, bien sûr), mingled while a big band performed film scores, speaking to the designer’s love of cinema.
L’exhibition(iste) is hosted at the Palais de la Porte Dorée – the façade of which was bathed in red light for the opening night – an imposing art deco museum in Paris’s 12th arrondisement. Despite the grandeur, there is an intimate backstory to the venue of Christian’s first ever solo show in France. It was here that the young Christian noticed an illustrated sign forbidding visitors to wear high-heeled shoes. It subsequently inspired his signature Pigalle pump.
Christian grew up just a stone’s throw from the museum, and was first acquainted with the worlds of art and design in its galleries. ‘It made me dream and travel, before I would actually travel,’ he tells me at the preview for the exhibition. ‘I really owe a big part of my imagination to this place. So I wanted to give back the same emotion that I had as a kid here.’ His goal, he says, is for visitors to be ‘surprised and maybe happy or fascinated’.
It must feel strange, for imagine the young Christian wandering the Palais’ galleries and now being the main event himself. ‘Funny enough, I never dreamt big,’ he says. ‘I never really dreamt of professional things or being anything special. My thing was to do beautiful shoes, always. But it was
not necessarily to put my name on.’ He adds with a smile, ‘I realise now I would have been very unhappy if it hadn’t happened, but I had never dreamt it.’
It did happen, though, on a global scale. Today, women – and men – the world over are obsessed with their Louboutins (none more so than Cardi B, who has rapped about the ‘red bottoms’ and been rumoured to buy a new pair every couple of weeks). Brigitte Macron wears hers on state visits, Leonardo Dicaprio picked up his Oscar in a pair. Aretha Franklin loved Louboutins so much she was buried wearing red pumps.
Next year, the brand turns 30, and its appeal continues to endure far beyond Planet Celebrity. Christian believes its because ‘women do see unconsciously the big love and respect that I have for them. That’s why I am always offended when people say, “to do high heels is bad for women, you oblige women”’. To that, he replies, ‘Do you really think that I feel that I have the power to oblige people I don’t know to wear my shoes, not because they want to, but because they want to please me? Come on! Most women I know, they know what they want and they do what they want. Thank God! They are in charge.’ (He, for the record, loves making an effort with fashion. ‘It’s almost an homage to the other person. It’s respectful,’ he says.)
One room in L’exhibition[iste] is strictly off-limits for the under-16s. It’s dedicated to Christian’s collaboration with film director David Lynch, and is a fetish collection of extreme, whip-crackingly fierce oddities such as 26cm heels and Siamese pumps (one-offs, not made to be worn it should be noted). His own definition of sexy ‘is a state of mind, but it’s also something quite unexpected. Some people have a sexy touch, and some people just don’t,’ he shrugs. Surely a Louboutin can help us all unleash our inner sex goddess, though? ‘It puts people in the state of mind, but it’s really your desire to feel sexy and to be sexy. A shoe is an element that can help you, but it can just help. You put the attention on the foot, but you don’t feel your foot is sexy, you feel sexy yourself,’ he says, adding that the right shoe is ‘like a little character’ that can help tease the sexy out of you.
The Lynch partnership is just one of many collaborations in L’exhibition[iste], for which Louboutin has also teamed up with New Zealand multimedia artist Lisa Reihana and Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi.
The final section of the exhibition is dedicated to Christian’s inspirations. An immersive dive into his mood board, it runs the gamut from Wedgwood china to Helmut Newton photography, Gandharan art to Andy Warhol paintings, a Bhutanese crown to a pair of Mae West’s shoes. A smorgasbord of references, it demonstrates Christian’s fearlessness in mixing the high and low, classic and pop, art and artisanship. ‘Often, I put artisanship at the same level as art,’ he explains. ‘My father was a carpenter, but he always loved fine art and objects. And it’s important for me to express. The idea here is “inside the head”, rather than “behind the scenes”.’
In keeping with his you-can-sit-with-us attitude, Christian is keen that even those people who don’t ‘get’ luxury fashion might find something to be inspired or excited by at the exhibition – just as he was as a youngster in this museum all those years ago. ‘What I really wanted to do here was an exhibition, not only for the happy few who have access to fashion shows, but to do a popular exhibition,’ he says with a smile. ‘To me, popular is not a dirty word.’ Christian Louboutin L’exhibition(iste) is on now at the Palais de la Porte Dorée until 26 July (palais-portedoree.fr)