He turned shoes into fetish objects, brought back the stiletto and counts Lady Gaga, Madonna
and Oprah Winfrey as fans. But does he really think Barbie has fat ankles?
God forgive me, I interviewed Christian
Louboutin while wearing a pair of trainers. Not fancy sci-fi ones either, but properly old
and grimy ones. Louboutin is one of the most famous shoe designers in the world and officially
the most prestigious, according to independent ratings company Luxury Institute, which has named Christian
Louboutin as the most desirable shoe brand in the world for the past three years. He is also the
man who is credited, or blamed, for bringing the stiletto back into fashion. So wearing trainers
to meet him is a little like suggesting to Jamie
Oliver that we meet at McDonald's for lunch.
But then – whaddyaknow – Louboutin turns up to his tiny and
stiletto-filled office wearing trainers himself. (Although where mine say Converse, his say, in a discreet logo on the side,
Christian Louboutin, which, presumably, would come in handy should he forget his name.)
"Your trainers are nicer than mine," I say as we settle on the striped sofa against the wall.
"Oh non..." he drawls in a tone that says, "Oui, oui, oui, oui, oui."
But he assures me that he does not judge women by their shoes. Well, not exactly.
"I look at the face first. And when I look at the face, I try to see the personality and, from
that, guess what kind of shoes this girl would have."
"So what shoe would my face suggest?" I ask.
He stares at me very intently for about five seconds before answering: "A DM boot."
Perhaps he was just tired. He had flown in that morning from Dubai where he is about to open his
20th boutique – with another 13 planned this year – and did
not sleep on the plane "at all". And once he warms up and we turn the conversation away
from strict business chat, he is really good fun, making dry remarks and then smiling quietly
afterwards. At one point I ask if, having shod pretty much every celebrity in the world, from
Madonna to France's first lady Carla Bruni, there is anyone left
he'd like as a customer. His eyes skirt around the office, settling at last on a pair
of particularly high black stilettos, studded all around with silver spikes. He turns back
and replies, po-faced, "The Queen of England."
For a long time, perfume sales powered the fashion world. Then it became jeans. Now, more than
ever, it's shoes and bags, and it is no coincidence that Louboutin arrived in the 90s when this
switch began. He, Manolo Blahnik and
Jimmy Choo's Tamara Mellon are
the Holy Trinity of the luxury footwear market, having helped turn shoes from something you put
on your feet to avoid splinters into fetish objects for women. Louboutin is now at the top of that triangle.
Where Manolo Blahnik shoes are either plain or quirky, and Jimmy Choos have the distinct sheen of
Eurotrash to
them, Christian Louboutin shoes say one simple word: sex. Everything about them
– from their disco styles, to the aggressive thrust of the shoe's curvature,
to the almost pornographic red sole, flashing observers from behind as the lady walks away
– shouts sex.
Seemingly every celebrity under the paparazzi sun, from Lady Gaga to Victoria Beckham, has proclaimed their love of the man. But Louboutin himself proves
to have remarkably little interest in the international celebrity scene. Was he starstruck when,
say, Madonna was photographed wearing his shoes? No, he wasn't. But he was a little excited
when he found out that the first Mrs Johnny
Hallyday was a fan – "Hallyday is a big singer in France, you
know."
Louboutin also recently received the highest honour a shoe designer can receive these days: his
shoes are to be featured in the new Sex
And The City film. This is not only a major plug, but a potentially controversial one,
as Manolo Blahnik shoes were such a mainstay of the TV series that the term "Manolos" entered the
lexicon. But is Louboutin excited? Bof.
"I think it's a good thing because people tell me it is. I don't have a TV, you see," he says
with a shrug.
Any awkwardness between him and Blahnik? Another baffled shrug.
He even refused to go on the Oprah Winfrey Show when she did a whole episode about how much she loves his shoes,
which is as close as you can get to being knighted in America. "They filmed the first part of the
show in Paris and made me stand outside in the cold – so of course I got
sick," he says, still outraged by the cheek of it. "So then when they said, 'Come to Chicago'
[where Winfrey films her show], I said, 'Are you crazy? I'm sick, my God!'"
Instead, Louboutin prefers his hobbies: landscaping (there are often plant details on his shoes),
trapeze (he has a swing in his studio) and, occasionally, dancing. He recently made a film of himself tap dancing for
Simon Fuller's fashion website, Fashionair,
which is a vision of unselfconscious joy (and, yes, he made the shoes).
Is he a regular tap dancer? "Well," he says with a hint of understatement, "I've got rhythm."
He has also been redesigning his Paris apartment for five years. "It's not that I'm a
perfectionist," he says, before launching into a seven-minute anecdote about how he's made the
builders redo the windows three times to get the angles right.
Most of all, he works: supervising the factories, having meetings around the world and then,
twice a year, he will isolate himself in one of his four country houses (Egypt, Syria,
France, Portugal) while he designs the new collections.
When we meet it's the first day of Paris fashion week, a prospect that does not suffuse his face
with joy. "I never was interested in being part of the fashion world – I just
wanted to design shoes. I didn't even know Vogue existed
when I was growing up. Vogue, what is that?" he protests.
A few years ago, Louboutin was offered the job of designer at a major fashion label, though he
won't say which one. "And I really was almost offended," he says, still sounding it. "I mean, the
shoe – there is a music to it, there is attitude, there is sound, it's a
movement. Clothes – it's a different story. There are a million things I'd
rather do before designing clothes: directing, landscaping. Designing clothes?" His face
indicates his opinion of that.
Louboutin was born in 1963 and raised in Paris. His father was a carpenter and his mother was
"definitely not" a high heel fan. His four sisters liked "cork
wedges", he remembers, with no fondness. "Pretty much the opposite of what I do now."
Yet his taste was established in his childhood. When Louboutin was 13, he and his friends would
sneak out of school to go to Le
Palace, a Paris nightclub, but while his mates looked at the girls on stage, he just looked
at their shoes. "Some of the shoes I make today are still inspired by the Palace
– the disco look, the metal, the glitter."
He never went to fashion or design school and instead got his training working for, among others,
Charles Jourdan, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent. However, he had an unfortunate tendency to get fired: "It's because I
was a terrible assistant. An assistant is supposed to assist –
I always wanted to do my own thing."
He is adamant that he never had any career plan or ambition to own his own company, which I don't
wholly buy. It is very hard to be successful without wanting it very badly, particularly in the
fashion business, and Louboutin, for all his Gallic nonchalance, does play the game. He once
decided to miss a flight back to Paris from America so he could spend two more hours in a
department store autographing his shoes. "To my favourite hot housewife," Time magazine claimed
he scrawled on one customer's shoe.
Today, Louboutin shoes are known for two things: price and height. A pair of Louboutin high heels
can easily cost $700 (£465); boots can go up to $2,000 (£1,325) and more. Nor are his
the only ones: all designer shoes seem to have increased in price by at least 50% in the last
decade, which Louboutin blames on the
euro – "Everything got more expensive, even bread" – as
opposed to designers simply jacking up the prices when they realised people were willing to pay
them.
As well as being in the vanguard of higher prices, Louboutin is also at the forefront of higher
heels, bringing stilettos back into fashion, together with all the contradictions that come with
them. Jennifer Lopez once told Harper's Bazaar magazine that Louboutin's shoes
"kill you. But they're the sexiest shoes around." How can immobility be sexy?
At this point Louboutin starts talking about "the construction of the shoe" and "the direction of
the weight" and all the usual noises people make when trying to claim that a high-heeled shoe can
be comfortable. But the fact is, no matter what the construction, the woman is hoicked up on her
toes. The argument about whether or not high heels empower women is fruitless and, after all this time, a little tired. But
even Louboutin seems stumped by the contradiction. When I ask if comfort is an important factor
in designing his shoes, he ums and ahs a tad: "It is important because a woman doesn't look good
if she's not comfortable. But I wouldn't take it as a compliment if someone looked at one of
my shoes and said, 'Oh, that looks like a comfortable shoe'," he says with distinct scorn. When
asked if there is such a thing as a too-high heel, he replies, "There is a heel that is too
high to walk in, certainly. But who cares? You don't have to walk in high heels."
Germaine Greer recently wrote,
citing Louboutin in particular, "While feminists have been struggling to set women free, high
heels have conquered the world."
"I haven't heard that kind of idea since the 70s. Thank God that childish idea has vanished. Who
said that?" he asks sharply.
Germaine Greer. "Who's that?"
A feminist academic. She wrote a very famous book in 1970... "There you go, she's a 70s feminist.
She's keeping her bases covered," he interrupts, settling the matter. For the defence, Louboutin
cites one of his heel-loving customers, Madonna – "And she's pretty
independent."
Last year, Louboutin signed a deal to make a special Louboutin Barbie. He agreed on one
condition: they would have to slim down the doll's insufferably fat ankles.
"Did you really tell them to make Barbie's legs thinner?" I ask, expecting him to deny it.
"Yes," he replies without a blink. "The ankle was a bit straight and there's nothing more pretty
than a very curved ankle. So I said to them, the one thing that could really give her perfection
is to give a curve to her ankle." He smiles. "It's not like she's going to suffer for it."
Hadley Freemanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use
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