Christian Louboutin’s red-soled high heels are not known for their comfort. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who said Louboutins were comfortable to wear.
There’s a good reason for this.
Christian Louboutin designs his shoes to look beautiful. He does not design them with comfort in mind.
The distinction between comfort and beauty has been one that Louboutin has been at the forefront of. Importantly, it is not that he deliberately makes his heels painful to walk in. Rather it is that the designer will not compromise looks for comfort.
And Louboutin has stuck to this rule for a long, long time.
Back in April 2012 Louboutin was quoted as telling Grazia Magazine that he had “not so much sympathy” for women wearing his designer high heels. “High heels are pleasure with pain. If you can’t walk in them, don’t wear them,” Christian thundered, causing a predictable outcry.
This followed 2011’s hullabaloo when Christian told the New Yorker ‘I HATE the whole concept of comfort!”
Women in ugly shoes wrote furious newspaper columns in protest. These were largely ignored and sales of the red soled shoes continued their rise.
The designer elaborated on his passionate dislike in the same interview with the New Yorker: “It’s like when people say: ‘Well we’re not really in love but we’re in a comfortable relationship.’ You’re abandoning a lot of ideas when you’re too into comfort.”
Christian wasn’t a fan of the word “comfy” either:
Comfy, that’s one of the WORST words! I just picture a woman feeling bad, with a big bottle of alcohol, really puffy. It’s really depressing, but she likes her life because she has comfortable clogs.
All of this should have been enough for readers to tell that Christian was teasing a little, but it didn’t stop a PR brouhaha developing.
Reflecting on the comment to Metro in 2012 Christian described it as “sort of a misquote.”
“I have no problem with the idea of comfort,” the designer continued, “but it is not an important thing aesthetically. If you look at a shoe and immediately say it looks very comfortable, in terms of design, it is not going to excite me. Of course, I am not putting nails in my shoes to ensure everybody is in pain, but a heel is not a pair of slippers and never will be.”
Those comments may not win Christian a gold medal for prioritising comfort, but is that such a bad thing?
At least he’s honest. After all, most women say Louboutins are uncomfortable.
But they still buy them more than any other designer shoe because what they lack in comfort they make up for in beauty.
Christian further explained his priorities to CBS News in 2013:
Design is my most important thing, but then after I have tricks to make in order to make those shoes as comfortable as possible, but it’s true that the comfort is not my first thing. If you look at my shoes I just don’t want you to tell me “Oh my God it looks so comfy.” That’s not a thing that I would take as a compliment.
Knowing all this, has Christian Louboutin ever tried wearing his own shoes? The answer is yes, but only twice.
The first time was at a cross-dressing themed party. “And another time I was making heels and I was trying to understand the balance, the center of gravity. It was very technical, so I can’t say I’ve worn high heels for excitement, or to feel like a woman,” the designer confessed to Popsugar Fashion News back in 2010.
Once or twice was enough though. “I can understand that it is not like walking on sneakers,” Christian told CBS News in 2013.
Feature image credit: Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks (public domain)