RED, HOT AND LOUBOUTIN
French shoe designer’s boyish energy infuses beauty line, launch
“It’s always been fluid, my work for women, because there is a showgirl in every woman in a way.”
Christian Louboutin
Christian Louboutin strolls into the Brasserie at the Mandarin Oriental hotel. It’s 10:30 on a sunny-for-San Francisco morning, haze gently lifting away. Dressed in a white Lacoste polo shirt, cobalt blue pants and his own Yacht Spikes leather loafers, the French shoe designer is the picture of relaxed elegance, and he’s ready to play.
M. Louboutin is in San Francisco to promote his new Rouge Louboutin nail lacquer, an exquisite scarlet gemof a polish, and for the pleasure of visiting one of his favorite cities in the world and exploring the California coast (he planned to zip off in a convertible Audi rental car later, en route to Big Sur, then L.A.). “The first time I ever went to California was to San Francisco,” he tells me. “Being from Paris, I feel quite at home here.”
There is a boyishness about Louboutin. An air of mischief, whimsy, excitement. A genuine enthusiasm for art and life. This feeling is perhaps amplified with the launch of Christian Louboutin Beauté. “Now the adventure is very new to me in a way,” he says.
Louboutin’s foray into beauty began 22 years ago, when he painted his first stiletto sole with a bottle of deep red nail polish. “The collection I was designing in 1992 was very bright because I thought of Andy Warhol and Pop Art and things like that. The color had to be really poppy,” he explains. But when the first prototype arrived, “a Mary Jane with a buckle which was a big flower,” he says (his Pensée style), “it was very close tomy primary design but for some reason that I couldn’t explain it looked much better on the drawing.”
After careful examination, Louboutin realized that the shoe’s black underside was muddying his design. He grabbed a bottle of red nail polish from a nearby foot model, much to her irritation (“she only had two fingers done,” he laughs), and his signature sole was born.
Rouge Louboutin is, therefore, a natural extension of the designer’s brand. “I thought, ‘Let's give back to Caesar what is started by Caesar,’ ” Louboutin says. “Starting by the nail polish is reintegrating my own story,” which is something extremely important to a man who says he is obsessed both with reading signs and with legitimacy. “After 22 years, I got proposed a lot of things to put my name on, and I always said no and the reason is that I have to feel legitimate.”
It’s hard to imagine anything but complete authenticity from Louboutin, who relishes travel (he has homes around the world) and a diverse array of cultures, people and influences, and seems to find inspiration everywhere. He tells Style about the previous day’s jaunt at Treasure Island FleaMarket with such enthusiasm, I can’t help but smile.
“There was a couple, great couple. She was taller than him. He was Asian, she was more Spanish, and they were both in red, bright red. She had a red dress, type of 1950s, and she was completely tattooed, black hair and then wedges. He was in shorts with the baseball cap bright red, the shorts red, the T-shirt is red, and they were pushing a trolley. They looked fantastic.”
From his hotel suite, with its sweeping city views, he points out Treasure Island in the distance (“TI, I think you say here”), where he also purchased an oversize ceramic bowl in the shape of a seashell and two hats from Oakland’s HiHat.
Sinking into the sofa, he slips off his shoes and props his leg up. I ask what else he loves about San Francisco. He mentions a textile he’s been eyeing at Britex, and shows me pictures. “Viola here. Blue and ivory. This fabric, which I love, looks like a type of David Hicks 1960s fabric. That’s really a thing that I wanted to buy. For shoes, it's toomuch of a big pattern, but I love the pattern, so I end up finding something to do with it.”
The fabric giant is not far from his new flagship, which Louboutin quietly opened on Maiden Lane in May. “I love
that street. I love the buildings,” he says. “There is a strong architectural influence that is verymuch a reflection of the city.” The store is unique in the sense that it is the first to sell both his men’s and women’s lines under the same roof. They are “integrated together because it’s exactly theway that I feel the city is,” he says.
Men’s is a rapidly growing division of Louboutin’s brand, though it’s just 4 years old. He now designs everything from classic leather oxfords to elaborately embroidered smoking slippers and crystal- and spike-embellished sneakers. There’s even a shoe tattoo parlor, where discerning clients can turn body art into custom kicks (for an equally pretty price, of course). It’s the level of detail and design ingenuity once reserved for his women’s shoes— which brought him worldwide fame and secured his place in pop culture (remember Jennifer Lopez’s 2009 dance hit, “Louboutins”?).
“For a long time Iwould not touch men’s shoes,” Louboutin says. It wasn’t until Mika, a young European pop star, persuaded him to design a series of shoes for his stage performances that Louboutin entertained the idea of designing for men. “It’s always been fluid, my work forwomen, because there is a showgirl in everywoman in a way,” he says. Until he “realized that menwere not completely different than women… there is a show man in every man, too.”
Showmanship is a thread that runs through all of Louboutin’s work. He turns it on without even trying. In the car, on ourway to Maiden Lane, where we spent time perusing the pedestrian alley aswell as the shelves of his boutique, I ask him if he often sketches ideas on the go. He immediately plucks the stylus from his smartphone and begins showing me its drawing capabilities.
Within minutes, bumpy road be damned, he produces a purply-pink strappy stiletto (which I suggest he name after me; a girl can dream, right?). He insists it’s not his best work and says he will send me another, better sketch. I, however, think the impromptu piece sums up the designer sowell: Authentic. Artistic in every sense of theword. A passionate perfectionist with an endlessly creative spirit. Agenuine gentleman. Andaman who is always on solid footing.