'Money can’t buy charm': Christian Louboutin on true luxury beyond wealth
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“I was trying to buy a piece of art, but the dealer wouldn’t sell it to me. I kept going back, until he got so fed up that he asked, ‘What about your shoes?’” Louboutin recalls. It was 1990, and at the time, he had left shoemaking to pursue landscaping. “I said, ‘I don’t want to work for anyone.’ Then he said, ‘Why don’t you work for yourself? There’s a shop at the end of the gallery — why don’t you take it?’” Though the idea hadn’t occurred to him before, Louboutin bought the store, and from that moment, the seed for his eponymous brand was planted. Since then, his iconic red-soled shoes have become a global symbol of glamour, adorning the feet of stars such as Taylor Swift, David Beckham and Rihanna.
For Louboutin, however, true luxury is learning to love yourself.
In your ETPanache interview in 2016, you said space and time are your ideas of luxury. The pandemic gave us large amounts of both. Has your idea of luxury changed since then?
The pandemic highlighted that time was very important. Out of bad things can come good things. I understand that I am privileged in many ways. I did have a fantastic time because it was a moment to regroup for a lot of people — including myself. Of course, it was not a holiday for everyone. But the aspect of regrouping was interesting for me. A city like Venice became green again; the water was clear. In Paris, you had animals coming out; I had never seen a duck in Paris before. It gave us the lesson that if you give a little time to Mother Nature to come back, she
