Christian Louboutin builds Spring/Summer 27 around a fairytale and a familiar pump

Christian Louboutin presented his women’s Spring/Summer 27 collection in Paris on October 2 as a staged fairytale, with one of the house’s longest-running pumps at the centre of it.

The show, titled Eternal Youth, starred burlesque performer Dita Von Teese at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Accompanying notes explain that Louboutin wants to return glamour to its original meaning, in the sense of a magic spell, rather than a desire to be seen. Glamour, in this telling, is not show but a power to change how a room perceives what is in front of it. Per the house’s own material it is a performance, built to introduce the season’s reading of a signature shoe.

Eternal Youth opens in a quiet sadness that leads into enchantment. As Von Teese arrives to set the scene, the house is explicit about the likeness and about where it stops. Black hair, pale skin, red mouth: Snow White, with a refusal of the rescue. “This is not the story of a heroine rescued by a prince,” the presentation notes say. “It is the story of a woman becoming the author of her own destiny.”

The costumes are credited piece by piece rather than as a collection of clothes. Von Teese wears a corset by Mr Pearl, a headpiece by Stephen Jones and a white cape by John Galliano. She then meets a double, described as rival and alter ego: the ideal woman and the free woman, two sides of one person rather than two characters in dispute. Mythic footwear is written into the plot. Red shoes that will not stop dancing, seven-league boots, winged sandals. The house then turns to spotlight its iconic La Pigalle pump shoe, a signature piece it calls a guide through the landscape and a symbol of confidence and emancipation.

La Pigalle, named for the Paris district, has been in the line since 2004, a pointed toe and a high heel the house has treated as a signature. The presentation describes the shoe as the means of movement and self-expression, the object that takes the heroine from one version of herself to another.

The collaborators indicate the scale the house wanted. Set and costume design is by Bruno de Lavenère, whose credits include the Paris Opera, the Comédie-Française, the Bolshoi and, with Emmanuel Favre, the scenography of the Paris 2024 Olympic opening ceremony. He was also scenographer for the Paralympic opening. Direction is by Olivier Balazuc. Music is led by conductor Mathieu Herzog, founder of the Orchestre Appassionato and a founding member of Quatuor Ébène, with singer Natacha Atlas and violinist and musical director Samy Bishai, her long-time collaborator. Choreography brings Josépha Madoki, known as Princess Madoki, whose waacking work has included Beyoncé, the Paris Opera and the 2024 Olympic opening, and the Tbilisi-based Bachana Dance Company.

Australian actors Elizabeth Debicki and Milly Alcock were among the prominent guests, with Cynthia Erivo and Jaden Smith, appointed the house’s creative directors last year. Locally, Louboutin has flagship boutiques in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as through David Jones stores. The Paris evening was a theatrical setting for many pieces those rooms already stock.

The house’s closing claim is that glamour, restored to enchantment, leaves the woman free to be wholly herself. A footwear label with a red sole in the line since the early 1990s, and a pump it has sold since 2004, used the staging to introduce the season.