Whether or not you are a connoisseur of the work of the famous creator of shoes with red soles, the summer exhibition at the Grimaldi Forum dedicated to Christian Louboutin is worth the detour.
Why ? Because The exhibition[niste]Chapter II, is much more than a classic exhibition. It is a real artistic spectacle. An experience that takes place over 2,000 m². The course was conceived as a joyful odyssey through three decades of abundant creativity, imbued with curiosity for all cultures and all arts. This curiosity is what has always driven Christian Louboutin.
Because if the shoes are obviously in the spotlight with a selection of unique pieces, including some models, the designer also wanted to pay tribute to those who inspire him and make him dream.
The exhibition thus transports the public on a marvelous journey, seducing men and women, art and fashion lovers and more generally a public in search of new and enriching experiences.
1. The first creations
This is the first room that we discover. It is decorated with a series of eight stained glass windows designed by Christian Louboutin himself. In the center, a showcase with the first shoes designed and made by the designer with the small means he had in his maid’s room.
A facetious DIY with unexpected materials like a “mackerel” shoe which is among his very first. It is in this room that there is also this pump called “Pensée” from 1993 worn by Princess Caroline at the Bal de la Rose in 1995.
A model that also recounts the birth of a lasting friendship with Christian Louboutin and Princess Caroline.
2. The shoe, the object of the most paradoxical interpretations
Welcome to the charming little Granny house which opens onto a pretty living room: trinkets, wallpaper, armchairs and a priori floral decoration. A priori. Because on closer inspection, it is something quite different.
Each ornament is composed of various combinations of a body entangled and repeated ad infinitum: that of the photographer Pierre Molinier who was transformed into a hypersexualized woman.
For Christian Louboutin, this is about showing how the shoe is the object of the most paradoxical interpretations.
3. The Nudes series for all skin colors
The Nudes series was initiated in 2009. Originally imagining a flesh-colored shoe and a unity between the color of the skin and that of the shoe, Christian Louboutin quickly understood that this flesh color could not be reduced to beige color, but that it must marry all the colors of Humanity. Today the Nudes thus have eight different shades of complexion. This series is considered in the history of fashion as a pioneering creative act.
4 and 5. The shoemaker’s most emblematic creations
In a room in the shape of a rotunda are the most emblematic creations of Christian Louboutin, chosen from a corpus which today numbers thousands of models, some unique, others matrices of continuous series for almost 30 years. A treasure room that gathered forward the eclecticism of Christian Louboutin.
The shoes on display are part of strong artistic references that regularly irrigate the shoemaker’s work. They also apply the Primitive Arts nourished by his fascination for Africa, Oceania and the Americas, such as this shoe (photo on the left) Punakha Hills from 2020 in wood and mink made by the school of thirteen royal crafts of Bhutan.
Another style in the photo on the right, with a box straight out of a fairy tale that contains one of the most emblematic collections of rhinestone shoes from the Louboutin house.
6. Louboutin’s collaboration with David Lynch
In 2007, Christian Louboutin and filmmaker and photographer David Lynch unveiled a series of extraordinary photographs. The first designed souls imagined not to walk, while the second, with his complicity, staged and photographed. The shoe then tells other stories, between fetishism and eroticism.