Seeing Red

Recently, it occurred to me that Marie Antoinette is not the only French royal to boast significant shoes.  And while I am no card-carrying Francophile, I felt compelled to use this week’s entry to discuss two Frenchmen (one royal by birth, one by fashion) whose individual use of red in shoes is as significant to fashion as it is to history.  I refer, of course, to the Sun King – Louis XIV and the sole king – Christian Louboutin.

While June Swann, the recognized expert in the field of shoe history, is quick to point out that the first red-heeled shoe appeared two decades before Louis’s birth in 1638, it is he who is given credit for launching it.  The man’s red-heeled shoe was de rigueur for court wear in both France and England during, and even after, Louis XIV’s reign.  This continuance of fashion and political statement was due in large part to the regimentation of court etiquette which consumed so much of Louis’s rule.  A rebellion led by the nobility in Louis’s youth led him to keep the court under a watchful eye, creating the cloistered and closely regulated society of Versailles, where sumptuary laws – or those laws which regulated the consumption or wearing of certain materials and styles – helped to keep pretensions of class and authority in check.  Louis decreed that the wearing of red-heeled shoes be limited to the king and the highest echelon of the aristocracy.  The identification of the red heel with the aristocracy was so firmly ensconced by the 18th century that Marie Antoinette’s own hairdresser, Léonard – truly one of the most pretentious of her entourage – bragged of being mistaken for a duke while wearing a pair of cast-off red-heeled shoes he purchased from a nobleman’s valet.  This instance of one of lowly birth wearing the costume of the upper crust is not unique – those of the servant class could expect to see yearly a portion of their living paid to them in the hand-me-downs of their masters.  And while many would wear what they were given, usually altered in some way, most would sale the used garments and accessories to second-hand clothing merchants to see a more financially liquid benefit from the proceeds.  This phenomenon of fashion passing from class to class despite regulation really requires a more in-depth discussion – for now, let’s leave the sumptuary laws behind to look briefly at the work of a modern-day ruler of soles, Christian Louboutin.

I think it is no coincidence that Louboutin’s signature sole is red – his first boutique opened onto the Place des Victoires, where a statue of the Sun King oversaw his first years in business.  Louboutin’s red sole may not be a literal nod towards shoe history but it is an element of design which has certainly earned its creator a place in the lexicon of shoes, alongside Louis’s red-heel.

I’d like to close this entry with a quote from M. Louboutin, from an interview with Label France Magazine’s Jacques Brunel: “Shoes are not an accessory; they're an attribute.”   Aptly put by a designer whose shoes make as brilliant a statement as their soles.