The famous shoes with red bottoms called are called “Louboutins”.
The high heeled shoes with red soles are named after French shoe designer Christian Louboutin who has produced them since 1992.
Christian Louboutin’s red-soled high heels are now easily the most recognisable shoes in the world. From behind, each step sets off a flash of bright red which draws attention to the wearer’s footwear like tail lights illuminating an expensive car.
And while the French designer has conceptualised thousands of shoe uppers over his long career, he is most famous for the bright red outsoles of his high heels – an area which, before Louboutin, was largely ignored.
How Christian Louboutin created his red soled shoes
Louboutin’s first pair of red soles were created in 1992, the same year that he opened his first boutique in Paris. Louboutin explained how the red soles came about in his own words in 2007, explaining:
In 1992 I incorporated the red sole into the design of my shoes. This happened by accident as I felt that the shoes lacked energy so I applied red nail polish to the sole of a shoe. This was such a success that it became a permanent fixture.
The red sole is not a by-product of the manufacturing process; adding red lacquer to the soles of the shoes is more expensive than producing lacquer-less soles.
The shiny red color of the soles has no function other than to identify to the public that the shoes are mine. I selected the color red because it is engaging, flirtatious, memorable and the color of passion. It attracts men to the women who wear my shoes.
The first shoe to get the red bottom treatment by Christian Louboutin was actually a prototype. The heel was called Pensee, a Mary Jane pump with a flower on the clasp.
When the prototype came off the line, Louboutin examined a pair in pink crepe. He saw that was was very close to his original drawing, and yet he still wasn’t entirely satisfied. “I was very happy, because it was similar to the drawing,” Louboutin recalled to the New Yorker in 2011, “but the drawing still was stronger and I could not understand why.”
Fortunately Louboutin’s assistant was painting her nails in the room at the time, and Louboutin joined the dots. He grabbed his assistant’s nail polish, painted the soles of the heels red and created an enduring fashion icon.
Popularity and protection
Sales of the shoes were instantly high, and they climbed higher and higher. “The red-soled shoes were an immediate sensation, and clients specifically came in to my stores looking for my red-soled shoes,” Louboutin declared in 2007. “The red sole quickly became my signature.”
On March 27, 2007 Louboutin filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to protect his trademark colored soles. The trademark was granted in January 2008, but competitors were circling.
In 2011 Yves Saint Laurent prepared to market a red “monochrome” shoe – a heel in which the whole shoe was all red, including a red insole, heel, upper, and outsole. In response, Christian Louboutin brought court proceedings against YSL in the United States District Court in New York.
Louboutin contended that the red soles were inspired by a stroke of original genius, manifesting in some nail polish and a high heel.
YSL argued that the red soles were simply copied from King Louis XIV’s red-heeled dancing shoes, or Dorothy’s famous ruby slippers in “The Wizard of Oz,” or other styles long available in the contemporary market. Those styles included red soled shoes said to have been sold by YSL since the 1970s.
Whatever the answer might be, District Judge Hon. Victor Marrero found that Christian Louboutin had deviated from industry custom in painting the soles of his shoes red: “In his own words, this diversion was meant to give his line of shoes “energy,” a purpose for which he chose a shade of red because he regarded it as “sexy.””
On appeal, the Second Circuit clarified that Louboutin’s red soles were a valid and enforceable trademark but limited the trademark to a red lacquered outsole that contrasted with the color of the adjoining upper.
This meant that YSL’s monochrome heels would not infringe Louboutin’s trademark because the colors of the sole and upper did not contrast – they were the same. But for shoes where there was a contrast, Louboutin obtained trademark protection where the sole was red.
Christian Louboutin’s red soles today
There was a certain irony in the litigation between Louboutin and YSL, stemming from the fact that the first soles that Louboutin painted red was Pensee.
Louboutin’s Pensee heel was inspired by Andy Warhol’s Flowers prints, which themselves were inspired by a photograph of hibiscus blossoms Warhol found in the 1964 issue of Modern Photography.
In 1964, Warhol was sued by the photographer – Patricia Caulfield – who recognized her photo of hibiscus flowers as the source material for “Flowers.” Caulfield won and was awarded $6,000, two prints of the artwork and royalties on future sales.
These days Christian Louboutin’s red soles today remain as iconic as they ever were, over 30 years on. And, while the colored soles appear on all of his shoes, two of the most popular are the Pigalle (introduced in 2004) and So Kate pumps (introduced in 2013).
Back in 2007 Louboutin explained how the red soles had become his theme.”My footwear is instantly recognizable by the immaculately lacquered red soles; upon seeing the red sole of the shoe, because it is so well known, people know that the shoes are designed by me,” he said.
“All of my shoes have had my signature red soles since 1992, and have continuously featured this device since then,” Louboutin continued. A statement that is true to this day.