Christian Louboutin

Christian Louboutin was born in Paris on 7 January 1964 and grew up in the 12th arrondissement, the son of a cabinet-maker. Expelled from school three times, he spent his teens around the nightclub Le Palace and worked backstage at the Folies Bergère, then travelled in Egypt and India. He returned to Paris in 1981 with a portfolio of drawings of shoes, which won him work at Charles Jourdan. He went on to apprentice with Roger Vivier, the inventor of the modern stiletto, and freelanced for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Maud Frizon, before a spell as a landscape gardener in the late 1980s.

With his friends Henri Seydoux and Bruno Chambelland he launched his own label in late 1991, opening a shop on rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau on 21 November. Princess Caroline of Monaco was an early customer, and her praise, overheard and published by a journalist, brought him wider notice.

The red sole followed in 1992 or 1993. Louboutin has said he took an assistant's red nail polish to the sole of a prototype, and the lacquered red underside became his signature. Through the 1990s and 2000s his shoes helped bring the very high stiletto back into fashion.

The sole has been defended in court repeatedly. In the best-known case, a US appeals court ruled in September 2012 that the trademark was valid, but only where the sole contrasts with the rest of the shoe, so Yves Saint Laurent could keep selling all-red shoes. In June 2018 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that a colour applied to a sole could be registered, while Swiss authorities refused protection in 2017.

The company added handbags in 2003, men's shoes in 2011 and Christian Louboutin Beauté, which began with nail lacquer, while Louboutin has refused to license his name. In 2020 the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris held a retrospective of his work.

In March 2021, Exor, the Agnelli family's holding company, bought about 24% of the business. Louboutin remains the house's creative director.