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With the flick of a tiny brush, an iconic calling card was born. For the now–famous creator of the iconic red soled heels, it was but a fortuitous “accident“ as he calls it, but for the world it was the beginning of an illustrious legacy. ©Christian Louboutin

A red polish absent–mindedly put on the nails, From then on, this passion seemed to take over
like a thousand other times before. Yet, that seemingly his life, but it still appeared to be a professional path.
trivial gesture changed the course of history. Or, rath- “I used to design stilettos, but I never thought it could
er, the story of one man, Christian Louboutin. turn into a job. I was fascinated by their power of se-
Because when he saw, on a day like any other, duction and their ability to shape a silhouette,” he ex-
one of his assistants putting on red nail polish leaning plained in an interview.
against his office desk, he had a hunch: he slipped the To support himself financially, Louboutin began
paint off her hands and began painting the sole of one working, as an intern, in the famous Parisian music
of his designs. He was thunderstruck: that red–soled hall Folies Bergère, where he was responsible for de-
shoe, at that moment, would become the unmistakable signing and making stage costumes. There, observing
symbol of his art. dancers, he realized that “the shoe can change the way
Born in Paris, the city of fashion, raised with his a woman walks, the way she moves, it can lengthen the
mother and three older sisters – hence, perhaps, the leg. The shoe can create magic, illusion, desire, and
deep knowledge of women’s tastes and accessories – these are all things I love.”
Christian Louboutin, of French–Egyptian descent, be- At that point, this passion took over all others:
came passionate about women’s shoes at a very young he himself began to create real women’s shoes – and
age. “I was 12 or 13 years old, I don’t really remember. no longer just designs –, first as a young apprentice at
At the entrance of a museum in Paris I saw a panel with Charles Jourdan, a French shoe maison that also pro-
the silhouette of a shoe with a heel and a red band on duced for Christian Dior and Pierre Cardin, and then
it,” he recounted. “They were forbidden because they moved on to Roger Vivier, a designer credited with
ruined the parquet floor. I started drawing shoes for launching the stiletto heel shoes, although they were
women all the time. In an almost manic way.” not his invention.

80 Fashion Protagonist