Sarah Jessica Parker wore them to the Met Gala. (Her alter ego, Carrie Bradshaw, has made them must-haves for fashionistas.) Beyoncé wore a custom pair (knee-length, covered in silver sparkles) during her Renaissance tour. They adorned the feet of puppets (Miss Piggy) and poets (Maya Angelou). Nicole Kidman wore them (in black suede, of course) to Princess Diana’s funeral.
These are Christian Louboutin shoes. The iconic deep red-soled heels have been a high fashion staple for decades.
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They can now be found on many different types of legs. The French shoe designer is collaborating with Pierre Yovanovitch on nine limited-edition chairs featuring “shoes” designed by Louboutin. Each chair is inspired by an allegorical or historical female muse, from Queen Nefertari and Josephine Baker to Louboutin’s fellow American vedette Dita Von Teese.
For Dita, they created silver platform heels with tassels that evoke Von Teese’s burlesque costumes. Josefina is an homage to Baker’s signature jungle costumes, featuring tangled rafa, fringe and beads. Zenobi is inspired by the empress of Palmyra and has legs adorned with turquoise stones; they climb on the hind legs and wrap around the front legs like ankle bracelets. Nefertari, a favorite of both Yovanovitch and Louboutin, has a laser-engraved lotus-patterned chair in blue, terracotta and bronze, along with bronze heels that evoke a sarcophagus crown. Radikalla, named after a phrase Yovanovitch often uses to describe a strict architectural approach, and Morphea, a homage to the Greek god of sleep, feature hand-painted floors by French artist Christophe Martin.
Starting Friday, the chairs will be on display at Yovanovitch’s New York atelier in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. An open version of the “Simply Nude” chairs, a tribute to Louboutin’s Nudes collection, are also available in a variety of wood and upholstery options, as well as shoes with the brand’s red lacquered soles.
“We have very different tastes in many ways,” Louboutin said. “But what we really have in common is our passion for detail and craftsmanship.”
The project is an evolution of Yovanovitch’s Monsieur Oops (Gérard) and Madam Oops (Catherine) chairs, released in 2017, featuring a simple shoe at the base of the leg and abstract male and female faces embroidered on the chair backs. “I knew I wanted to do something more involved next,” he said. The collaboration lasted two years.
“I like complicated things,” Yovanovitch said. “It bores me that it’s so simple.”
Thanks to her mastery of proportion, light and color, her dedication to craftsmanship and her mastery of fine details, Yovanovitch created a distinctive style. His works consist of oddities: Oops chairs; Dad, Mom and Baby bear seats inspired by the Goldilocks fairy tale; chairs designed to portray an owl. (In 2022, Mama Bear was added to the permanent collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.)
But the Louboutin project is in some ways a departure for Yovanovitch, who launched the furniture line in 2021 after working as an interior designer for two decades and, before that, a menswear designer for Pierre Cardin. Combining Yovanovitch’s meticulous standards with the sexiness of her Louboutin stilettos, the collaboration brings her true interpretation of haute-couture aesthetics.
“For me, the project was always seamless, almost like a vacation,” Yovanovitch said. “The chair is very serious, solid wood, very clean lines, and the little shoes that Christian made on each leg of the chair are very cheerful and fun. The situation is the same for us; I’m pretty serious, he’s always fun. I am shy; He is very outgoing. And I think the opposite character also makes something very interesting.”
Yovanovitch and Louboutin have known each other for years. Yovanovitch became friends with Louboutin’s boyfriend, master landscape designer Louis Benech, after he was contracted to design the gardens of the 17th-century country chateau in Provence that Yovanovitch and her partner, Matthieu Cussac, bought in 2009. Benech brought Louboutin to Louboutin for a weekend visit. castle. “We hit it off immediately,” Louboutin said.
In 2015, Yovanovitch designed the interior of Louboutin’s first beauty salon in the closed 19th section.ThisCentury arcades of Galerie Véro-Dodat near the Louvre. “It was a little store, like a little jewel box,” Louboutin recalls. “I immediately saw his talent for light, when you have a small space light is very important.”
When Yovanovitch called Louboutin and asked him to collaborate on some chairs, Louboutin immediately said “yes.” “I said to Pierre, ‘You know, my father was a carpenter.’ So I’m interested in everything related to wood and carving. But I won’t make a little shoe on the end of the chair. The chair is like the human body, the foot of the chair also has legs. ‘So let me work on the legs, not the shoes.’ And he agreed.”
Yovanovitch initially considered making men’s and women’s chairs reminiscent of Catherine and Gerard. But she said: “To men, legs weren’t very sexy. The woman’s legs are more beautiful. We created the shape of the legs with my carpenter. “We made many shapes so that we could finally choose the shape we both liked.”
“The chairs are very feminine,” Louboutin added. “Shape, it’s all about curves.”
Fifteen different artisans worked on each chair, including embroiderers Maisons Vermont, Lesage Interieurs and Montox, furniture designers Atelier Jouffre and Hugo Delavelle, leather expert Audrey Ludwig and painter Martin. Some of the chairs are quite plain and minimalist; Simply Nudes featured a carved wooden leg with a red painted base, while Morphea used gold painted feet that faded into a yellow wooden leg. Others, like Dita, are more theatrical; Metropolissa, a homage to Fritz Lang’s 1920s sci-fi epic “Metropolis,” features a silver leather boot with a stiletto that rises above the ground. But they all had to be functional. “People will sit on it,” Yovanovitch said. “It’s a sculptural piece, but I also want it to be a useful piece.”
Yovanovitch decided to exhibit the chairs in New York because the American market is more adventurous in its embrace of the avant-garde. (The US is Yovanovitch’s largest retail market.)
“American people are more open to fun things like that, and I thought maybe a friend of Christian’s from showbiz or a singer might like them. “I don’t have this kind of customer, my customers are more classical,” he said.
Many of the chairs have been sold. (The Muse chairs are $28,000, the Nude chairs are $13,000.) They will need to create additional versions of these bespoke pieces. “But they won’t be exactly the same,” said Yovanovitch, “how could they be?”
Examining the chairs displayed on the raised podium with bold red accents before the opening night reception, Yovanovitch noted that Martin’s hand-painted upholstery would be different. And the delivery time will probably be six months. Louboutin walked in a black Dolly Parton T-shirt under his denim shirt. “People want a table next to the chair,” he said, scrolling through his phone. Can we set up a table?”
