Christian Louboutin And His Tribute To India

You have to be blind not to be influenced by the vividness of India,” said luxury footwear designer Christian Louboutin in an interview a couple of years ago. One of the first luxury brands to make its way to India, the designer has made his love for the country more than evident with multiple associations with celebrated Indian couturier Sabyasachi Mukherjee. “When I was young, and a little bored during vacations I was escaping reality at the cinema watching Egyptian and Indian movies so the first thing I did when I arrived there was to visit a Bollywood studio, and since then my passion for this art never stopped,” he speaks fondly of his earliest memory of India. 

A pair of Louboutins, with their lacquered red soles, have become identifiable the world over; they carry with them an air of sophistication and an intricate amount of detailing that is still unmatched. “I used to go a lot to Les Follies Bergeres as a young teenager. I was fascinated by showgirls, I wanted to design shoes for them,” said Louboutin. “And approximately in the same years, I saw a sketch in a museum close to the house I lived in as a teenager. I used to go there almost every weekend, it was called at this time Les Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie. The sketch featured a high-heel stiletto crossed in red. I had never seen this kind of shoes until then—I was intrigued.”

Twenty-five years later, Louboutin’s signature red soles are the object of every woman’s envy and a global symbol of luxury. The red sole was born one afternoon when a prototype of a shoe inspired by Andy Warhol’s Flowers arrived in the hands of Louboutin, who found the shoe a little dull. Fortunately, an assistant was painting her nails red at the time of the arrival of the shoe, and Louboutin had the unique idea of using it to cover the dreary black sole, and so the iconic red sole was made. “Even if you don’t like colours you will still have red elements, won’t you?” he asks us. “Red lips, red nails. Red belongs to the origins of colours, it’s right in the middle between colours and non-colours. Red is the colour of love and of blood, which is synonymous with passion and life,” he goes on to explain. 

His unwavering desire to design shoes has remained very strong through the years, allowing him to keep reinventing his designs. He attributes a lot of his inspiration to travelling; which can be noticed in the indigenous elements that he incorporates in his designs whether it’s the wooden, handcrafted shoes inspired by his time in Bhutan or a Bollywood poster collection inspired by Mumbai. “If you keep your eyes wide open, there’s always something to look at which is going to be inspirational,” he muses.

Louboutin’s creations have always been a celebration of femininity, power, freedom, and most importantly love. Conforming to his ideology, the designer launched his latest collection titled ‘Love 2,’ the latest instalment in his ‘Love’ series. The collection features the four-letter word emblazoned on bags and shoes in a sort of graffiti-esque style. The designer describes the collection as an “expression of spontaneity, youth, and the degree of importance of love all the time,” making it the ideal choice for the edgy Indian bride. Back on the topic of India, we ask the designer what fascinates him about the country, to which he responds with a smile, “You know, India has always been a big place of inspiration for sort of everything. I love everything there: people always smiling, the food, the music and all those incredible colours. When I first visited the country, I was 15 and since then the country evolved so much but never lost its beautiful traditions.”

With his in-depth understanding of what women want, Louboutin advices brides to have five must-haves for the big day, which includes a classic Banarasi sari (probably worn by your mum during her wedding), contemporary jewellery, a wedding clutch in gold and silver (from Christian Louboutin, of course), a stunning gold lehenga, and sexy sleepwear. And what are the key accessories that he thinks the bride should have? “Shoes, of course. Bags, jewellery, a good pair of eyelashes, and, of course, a husband made of titanium,” he concludes.