The now very famous French shoemaker was able to turn his flagship shoes with red soles into a gold mine. How did the Christian Louboutin brand win the love of singers Beyoncé and Taylor Swift and the whole world?
40 years of affection from female clients who were happy with the iconic red-soled shoes made French designer and fashion designer Christian Louboutin a billionaire. It was Christian Louboutin, his eponymous brand, that helped the designer get into the cohort of the richest. And although Louboutin became famous for shoes and sandals with high heels and mind-blowing platforms, the Louboutin brand also produces trainers, bags and cosmetics. There are also product lines for men and children.
In 2023, the company of the French designer investment firm Exor estimated at $3.2 billion. The Italian family Agnelli, which owns Exor, bought a 24% stake in Christian Louboutin in 2021 for about $650 million. Louboutin still owns 35% of his brainchild, which Forbes estimates at $1.1 billion.
This asset makes up the lion’s share of the designer’s total fortune, which is $1.2bn, but he also has other investments. For example, the Vermelho Hotel, a luxury resort in southern Portugal that Louboutin opened last year. His representatives did not respond to Forbes’ request for comment on his wealth estimate.
‘I started the company with my two best friends,’ Louboutin told The Business Of Fashion in 2021. — I never thought about selling the company. I never thought about anything else but making beautiful shoes.’
The beautiful Louboutin-designed shoes, which start at $800 and can cost thousands of dollars, quickly conquered the world. Louboutin opened his first boutique in Paris in 1991. And one of the first famous clients was Princess Caroline of Monaco.
Since then, no red carpet is without Christian Louboutin shoes with a characteristic red sole. At the current Golden Globe ceremony, American celebrities Selena Gomez, Lanny Kravitz, Haydee Klum, Simu Liu and others wore shoes of this brand.
Last year during the concert tours Beyonce and Taylor Swift literally sparkled in Christian Louboutin shoes, created especially for the singers.
And thanks to Sarah Jessica Parker’s character Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, the Louboutins have become part of pop culture.
From the working class to the catwalk
Louboutin was born and raised in Paris to a working-class family. His father, originally from Brittany, made wardrobes while his mother was at home raising Christian and his three older sisters. (Many years later, when Louboutin was 51, he learned that his father was Egyptian)
At the age of 10, Louboutin visited the Paris Museum of African and Oceanic Art, where he saw a sign that forbade women to wear stiletto heels. The boy did not like such a rule, and that was the beginning of his fascination with these shoes.
‘I was born and brought up in a female environment. It was my sisters who helped me understand women and probably led me to my profession,’ the designer told Forbes in 2016. — I used to draw shoes all the time growing up, but I honestly never thought that creating them could be a profession.’
At 16, Louboutin was expelled from school and left to travel in India. When he returned to Paris, he became an intern at Folies Bergère, where he designed shoes for dancers. He then worked briefly for French shoe designer Charles Jourdan before freelancing for Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent. In 1988 he was hired by Roger Vivier, famous for inventing stiletto shoes in the 1950s.
‘When I was about 16, someone gave me a book in a beautiful gold binding about the shoe designer Roger Vivier,’ Louboutin told Forbes in 2016. — Then I thought how wonderful it is that there is such a profession and that you can design shoes for a living.’
he then took a short break from shoe-making to design terraces in New York and gardens in France. In 1991 Louboutin opened his first shop in Paris with the help of two friends, Henri Seydoux and Bruno Chamberlain. (Seydoux sold his stake in the business in 2021 during an agreement with Exor).
Louboutin came up with the idea for the red sole in 1992, when he was disappointed with a prototype shoe at the atelier. Then an assistant who was painting her nails with red nail polish happened to catch his eye. ‘I had to think about it for a while, but then I realised I didn’t like the black sole,’ Louboutin recalled all in the same 2016 interview. — I grabbed my assistant’s lacquer and painted the sole red.’
The brand began to proliferate, opening boutiques in New York in 1994 and London in 1997. During the next 10 years, Louboutin stiletto shoes could be seen everywhere, at all events: from Princess Diana’s funeral to Madonna’s music videos. In 2000 the designer registered the red sole as a trade mark, three years later he started selling handbags, and in 2009 it was the turn of the line of shoes for men.
Today Louboutin has more than 160 boutiques in 32 countries on four continents, including 35 in the U.S., 23 in Japan and 20 in China. ‘Louboutin is a rare example of a footwear brand that can go into any other product category, including clothing and handbags,’ says Luca Solka, senior luxury goods researcher at Bernstein.
Courts, houses and revenues
For years, Louboutin’s company has aggressively defended its red sole in a number of lawsuits around the world. This has led to legal battles with industry giants such as Zara (owned by Amancio Ortega’s Inditex), which the French brand lost, and Yves Saint Laurent (part of Bernard Arnault’s LVMH), which Louboutin’s company partially won against.
Last year, Louboutin won court cases in Brazil and India, and filed a lawsuit with Meta against a Mexican counterfeit manufacturer that sold pseudolouboutins via Facebook and Instagram.
The designer’s personal property portfolio includes properties around the world:
- a luxury apartment with mahogany floors in Paris near the Opera Garnier ;
- a house with a boat in Luxor, Egypt;
- flats in Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro;
- a 17th century building in Aleppo, Syria, which was damaged during the civil war;
- a group of residential buildings on more than 140 hectares of land in Melides, Portugal, near the designer’s hotel;
- a seven-room villa in Lisbon and a 13th-century chateau (where Louboutin allegedly keeps his 8,000-piece shoe collection) in the French countryside — both jointly owned with Chamberlain.
Although the brand’s range has expanded to include trainers and decorative cosmetics, Louboutin still plays an important role in the company’s success. He creates the autumn-winter collections in a French chateau or Portugal, and works on the spring-summer collection in Egypt or Brazil. His drawn designs are then transferred to factories in Italy and Spain, where they are turned into shoes.
Louboutin produces more than 1 million pairs of shoes a year. And, as with many luxury brands, high prices are the key to success. ‘Financial markets love luxury fashion brands because they have higher margins, investment capital returns and a powerful influence on price formation,’ explains Joren van Aken, an analyst at Belgian investment bank Degroof Petercam. — At the end of the day, the wealthy don’t care whether inflation hits 2 per cent or 5 per cent, they will buy luxury goods no matter what.’
After record profits during the pandemic, the luxury goods industry’s growth has slowed in 2023. Last year, it was footwear that was the luxury category with the lowest growth rate of just 2-3%, according to Bain & Company.
That caught Louboutin as well. The company reported $37 million in net income in the first half of 2023, down 51% from the same period in 2022. This was impacted by raw material shortages and slowing growth in China. However, that didn’t stop Louboutin from opening 10 new boutiques and ‘continuing to generate extraordinary revenues,’ according to the Exor report.
Louboutin doesn’t think about retirement and continues to do what he loves to do all his life.
