Christian Louboutin
“Christian Louboutin by Christian Louboutin is a delectable collector’s tome from one of this century’s greatest fashion and design talents.”
If shoes are an addiction for all women then this book is the antiMethodone treatment. If you love shoes—just have to have them—then Christian Louboutin by Christian Louboutin will simply fuel your cravings.
It is quite easy to imagine anyone, male or female, getting totally high while reading this book for Mr. Louboutin has taken the craft of shoemaking and design and catapulted them straight into the stratosphere.
Although Mr. Louboutin frequently gives in to flights of pure fancy, there is no question that he is as much engineer as designer, for how else can you get a woman to endure walking and balancing and looking exquisitely graceful in gravity defying stilettos—willingly? When it comes to his shoes—no, make that The Shoes—Mr. Louboutin is as much a fantasist as he is a master in the art of seduction.
The contents, formatted as a Q&A, is presented in such a way that one gets the sense of eavesdropping on an extended conversation between Mr. Louboutin and Mr. Reinhardt, the interviewer. The first section of this paean is devoted to Mr. Louboutin’s formative years accompanied by a scrapbook documenting his youth. We learn about his family, his life as a teenager, his stints as a club kid, and his time as a young man with no particular ambition, possessing a boatload of untapped talent.
The rest of this dramatic and perfectly executed volume is devoted to the subject at hand: SHOES! As is the wont in the fashion business, each style is named and photographed as if it were a precious jewel—which, of course, Louboutins are by some people’s estimations. The photography is also accompanied with explanations by Mr. Louboutin about how each of the styles germinated or was inspired and what it evolved into.
The last section of this visual feast is a photographic chronology of the brand. Season by season, year by year, style by style since the brand’s inception, Christian Louboutin affords shoe addicts a rare opportunity to witness the evolving collection, revolutionary in shoe design.
Maybe John Malkovich said it best in the foreword, “Christian always seems to challenge himself with every collection, and may it be thus” forevermore. Christian Louboutin by Christian Louboutin is a delectable collector’s tome from one of this century’s greatest fashion and design talents.