Christian Louboutin Spring Fashions

Spring is the season the shoe opens up, and Christian Louboutin's spring collections make an event of it. Straps replace closed uppers, constructions lighten, and the red-lacquered sole — his signature — gets its clearest daylight showing of the year. The Aquaronda shoes pictured for spring 2014 show the register: an open, warm-weather style that still reads unmistakably as Louboutin from underneath. This page follows the spring strand of his record in this guide.

The Photos section shows spring footwear and the season's handbags. Pair this page with its fall counterpart for the same signature at full weight, and with the collections page for the whole season-by-season file. The official Christian Louboutin website is linked in the references. Spring is also the season of occasions — weddings among them, which gives the season a personal footnote in the house's history: Sarah Jessica Parker wore a pair of Louboutin shoes for her own wedding, an endorsement no campaign could buy.

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

The Spring Register in Footwear

In spring footwear, design is subtraction. A fall boot can rely on material and coverage; a spring sandal is a sole, a heel and a few decisions about straps — which is why the season suits a designer trained on elaborate high heels and an apprentice's understanding of the stiletto. With less shoe to hide behind, line and finish carry everything, and the red lacquer beneath becomes a larger share of the design, not a smaller one.

The season's range still covers the full day: open sandals and lighter pumps for the evening, easier styles for warm streets, and handbags — the Sweet Charity handbags pictured for spring 2014 among them — carrying the collection's colors at hand height. A spring Louboutin look is assembled head to hand to toe, with the footwear setting the register the rest follows.

Spring on the Calendar

Spring footwear is presented with the spring clothing collections, well ahead of the warm weather it is made for, and photographed in the fashion week coverage the fashion week page in this series follows. The runway page shows what the season's shoes must then do: walk, turn and flash red under show lighting before they ever reach a pavement.

The rhythm the two season pages reveal — open springs, enclosed falls, one lacquered signature throughout — is the rhythm of the house since the Paris salon opened in 1991. Spring is where that signature breathes easiest: less shoe, more sole, and the design reduced to exactly what made it famous. Followed year by year, the spring file becomes the quickest way to read the house's mood: when spring heels rise, finishes brighten and straps multiply, the label is feeling expansive — and the dated spring photographs in this series let that mood be checked rather than guessed at.

Photos