Christian Louboutin

President of the fashion accessories jury and guest of honor

Le corREDor

“I like the idea of presenting aspects of my work that people are not
necessarily familiar with, and of moving away from the general perception that shoes are either something practical or an object to project desires and fantasies onto. The co- reREDor features eight shoes, each of which highlight differing facets of my work and how they relate to values I hold dear.”

  • Christian Louboutin

The intention behind the corREDor is to mark the end of a troubled time and echo that intimate period of dreamy escapism of a hundred years ago, the celebratory return to life known as the Roaring Twenties.
Conceived as an infinity room suffused with the colour red, the spatial design is frag- mented by silhouettes of the wooden lasts on which prototypes of shoes are developed.

“The imagination is one of the few things in life that is infinite — it has no limits”

A deep kaleidoscopic dive into the designer’s exuberant universe, this installation showcases eight remarkable shoes from past collections. Bringing these to life requires skilled hands and generations of savoir-faire — a long-term kind of vision.

“My father was a cabinet maker, and he passed on his appreciation for beautiful ob- jects to me. Not necessarily valuable objects, but always well-made ones.”

These shoes are a testimonial to outstanding craftsmanship, blending colour and design to celebrate global culture, but also to pay tribute to travel and technical innovation.
So Jetsun and Fairy Garden are two examples of shoes that represent travel and this dialogue between cultures. Their wooden platforms were carved and painted by students at the National Institute for Zorig Chusum (Thirteen Crafts) in Thumphu, Bhutan. Their uppers were designed to reflect motifs drawn in Bhutan, and were produced at our factories in Italy.

FaraBoot, Pied Noeud, Corset d’Amour, Jetsun Run & Zuleika Regina are all couture pieces, which each took several weeks to make. Featuring individually applied sequins, gold-leaf, lapis lazuli, and needle-lace, each of these handmade objects receives the utmost care and painstaking attention.
Expressing the essence of a unique technical craftsmanship, Ballerina Ultima is a piece of pure fantasy to be objectified and admired, rather than actually walked in. An almost inconceivable seventeen centimeters of heel bears the iconic red sole for which the house is so well known — itself the result of
a chance moment when Christian Louboutin was inspired by a studio assistant painting her nails at the exact moment that a prototype needed perfecting in 1992.

Each shoe is displayed on a wooden pedestal, also carved and painted by the Bhutanese artisans of the Thirteen Crafts. They form part of an original commission by Christian Louboutin from these true artists who live in the heart of the Himalayas, and whose trai- ning lasts over seven years.

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