Louboutin with his famous “sammy red-bottoms”
Life Story:
Christian Louboutin was born on the 7th January 1963 in Paris’ 12th arrondissement. His father Roger (cabinet-maker) and his mother Irene (homemaker) were both from Bretagne and had another 3 children along with Christian. Louboutin at a young age felt as if he was adopted due to having much darker skin than his family so instead of searching for his family he invented his own history from Egypt since he loved pharaohs. At the age of 12 Louboutin was expelled from school an astonishing 3 times and decided to run away from home. His mother Irene at this point decided to allow him to live at a friends house. He had alot of oposition during his decision to drop out of school but an interview with a famous Italian actor Sophia Loren boosted his decision as she too dropped out of school at the same age but still succeeded in life and got a degree later on in life. Louboutin stumbled across his passion by accident on a trip to the museum where he encountered a sign stating that high heels were not allowed in that area. He was fascinated by the high heel, the design as he said is like nothing he had ever seen before. Louboutin soon found himself running out of sketchbooks as his mind overflowed with brilliant designs. He also received further inspiration from a book called vivier’s designs given to him by a friend. Louboutin started dreaming of his own footwear designs in the early teens and at the age of 18 started working for the famous designer Charles Jourdan. Louboutin fascinated by world cultures ran away to Egypt in his teens and spend a year in India before returning to Paris in 1981.
Work:
During his young life Louboutin sketched footwear. He went through a punk phase when he was included in a few movies including the 1979 ult classic Race Dép and the Homosexual Century. Louboutin landed his first job in Folies Bergeres, a cabaret where he assisted performers backstage. He was also on the citys party scene as he was known to party with Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol. Louboutin’s return to Paris in 1981 with an amazing portfolio of women’s high heels resulted in him receiving a job with Charles Jourdan. It was with this job that Louboutin meet Vivier and he soon found himself an apprentice in Vivier’s atelier. Louboutin later became a freelance designer where he designed women’s shoes for many worldwide influential artists such as the amazing Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Maud Frizon. In the 1980s he left the fashion industry to become a a landscape gardener and to contribute to Vogue but Louboutin found himself missing shoe designs and finally decided to make the big step and set up his very own company in 1991. Louboutin was backed by 2 investors and made an incredible start to his successful career by having princess Caroline of Monaco as his first customer. Princess Caroline boosted the publicity and reputation of Louboutins freshly started business in an interview for a fashion journalist where she complimented Louboutin’s designs. Louboutin’s moto was to make “women look sexy, beautiful, to make her legs look as long as he can”. In his first year Louboutin sold 200 pairs of shoes, today this number has been extended to a massive 700,000 pairs per year. Louboutin also expects his revenue to raise at an astonishing 40% per year. 95% of the business annual income of 300 million dollars is only from shoes, with the other 5% from handbags and purses. Louboutin has around 56 stores located worldwide serving a variety of customers from average people to high Hollywood celebrities. Louboutin’s shoes are priced from 495dollars and up, with a custom made shoe priced at 4,000 dollars. Today Louboutin employs 420 staff and receives 250 million dollars revenue per year.
Notable Projects:
Christian Louboutin created designs unique to his style. his style from the start of his business in 1991 has been deeply loved by the worlds high-class and celebritiy, this has been proven by princess Caroline of Monaco being his first customer and publicly complimented the french designer on his work. later on in his career Louboutin continued to add stars and celebrities to his client list. Christina Aguilera, Joan Collins, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Marion Cotillard, Nicki Minaj, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian were all at some point clients of this french shoe masterpiece creator. Even Sara Jessica Parker wore a pair of Louboutins shoe’s to her wedding, Britney Spears wore a pair of Louboutin’s designs in her famous music video “If U Seek Amy” that were not available to the public clients until a month after the music videos release in 2009. Louboutin brought back the Stilettos in the 1990s and 2000s, and designed many different styles of these shoes with heels over 120mm tall. Louboutin is famous for incorporating jeweled straps, bows, feathers, patent leather and most famously red soles. His most popular red bottom high heel are commonly known as “sammy red-bottoms” which even have a specific unique colour code. Louboutin is also known not to give any shoes away not even to family as he thinks giving shoes away is “unimaginative”. Louboutins biggest client, Danielle Steel, is known to have 6,000 pairs of Louboutin’s shoes and is known to purchase 80 pairs at a time. In 2011 Louboutin introduced a line of mens footwear in Paris. it is romoured that Mika, a famous musician, asked Louboutin to design all the shoes for his tour and that this kick-started Louboutin’s mens footwear creations. in 2012 Louboutin partnered with Batallure Beauty LLC to create Louboutin Beauté to enter the luxury market and this product would be available in 2013. At the 2012 Grey Groose Winter Ball, Louboutin designed his dream bar to benefit Elton John’s foundation featuring Louboutin’s much loved Egyptian style designs. In 2011 Louboutin published a book for his 20th anniverasy published Rizzoli featuring his most iconic designs and insights on his imfluences and photos from personal archive. Louboutin held a competition for design students at Parsons New School for Design who graduated in 2010 and 11. In 2012 he was comisioned by Disney to create a modern Cindarella shoe to be limited produced. Also in 2012 an iphone app was launched featuring all necessary info such as seasonal collections.
Awards:
Louboutin won the luxury institute’s annual Luxury Brand Status Index (LBSI) for three years, also his designs were declared the most prestigious womans shoes in 2007, 2008 and 2009. By 2011, Louboutin became the most searched shoe brand online.
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