Christian Louboutin Collections

A Christian Louboutin collection is a study in how much variety one signature can carry. Season by season, the record filed here moves through women's stilettos and pumps, boots and sandals, a men's footwear line with its own spiked attitude, and handbags that accompany the shoes — every footwear piece finished over the shiny, red-lacquered sole that has become his signature. This page holds the collections view of his record in this guide.

Work through the seasons here, then use the fall fashions and spring fashions pages in the series to follow each strand on its own. The Photos section gathers collection shoes across the range, from the Jazzydoll shoe to the men's styles. The official Christian Louboutin website is linked in the references for the current collection. The file is kept in season order so that changes in heel height, finish and men's styling can be compared across years — the dated photographs, from fall 2013 through spring 2014 and beyond, are what make those comparisons possible rather than matters of memory.

Illustrative image created for this guide — an artistic impression, not this designer's own garments.

Reading a Louboutin Collection

Read the heel first. Louboutin trained on elaborate high heels — the drawings he carried to the top couture houses in 1981 were of exactly that — and the women's collection still leads with height and line: the stiletto's spike, the pump's curve, the sole lacquered red beneath both. Around those leads, each season arranges its supporting cast of lower heels, flats and boots, so the collection reads as a wardrobe of shoes rather than a single repeated statement.

The men's side deserves its own read. The Alfie men's footwear pictured for 2014 and the Rollerboy Spikes men's style show the same house discipline pointed at a different customer: formal shapes given an edge, spikes and studs doing the work that heel height does on the women's side. The red sole runs under both lines, which is what makes them one collection rather than two labels sharing a name.

Collections Beyond the Shoe

Handbags sit inside the collections as companions to the footwear — the Sweet Charity handbags shown for spring 2014 and the spring 2014 handbag photographed for the news page carry the collection's season, colors and finish at hand height. They matter to the record because they show the house thinking in complete looks: the bag chosen with the shoe, not after it.

For how each collection was presented, pair this page with the runway and fashion week pages in the series. For why the shoes look the way they do, the profiles page holds the answer — an apprenticeship with Roger Vivier and freelance years designing women's shoes for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Maude Frizon, filed season by season into collections like these. Seen whole, the collections record also explains the label's reach: a house that can dress a foot for a wedding, a runway, an office and a night out — in women's heels and men's spiked loafers alike — is not dependent on any single style surviving a change of fashion.

Photos