Word: shoes
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Most designers learn their craft in the ateliers of more seasoned masters, but shoe designer Christian Louboutin found his calling as a 17-year-old apprentice in the dressing rooms of Paris' famous cabaret the Folies Bergère. "I would watch the girls going up and down the stairs with these very heavy headdresses on, and they never looked at their shoes," he says. "That's where I learned that shoes are all about posture and proportion...
Showgirls of all kinds--from Tina Turner to Nicole Kidman--are still an inspiration for Louboutin, 44, whose instantly recognizable red-soled stilettos have become de rigueur on the red carpet and among Hollywood's A-list crowd. "He is the foremost shoe designer in the world," says Valerie Steele, director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where his designs were the subject of a recent retrospective, "Sole Desire...
More than a cunning marketing concept, the red sole was a happy accident. While working on a prototype in his studio in his early designing days, Louboutin searched for a way to match the shoe to a colorful sketch. "Something was missing, and I couldn't figure it out," he remembers. "Then I realized that the black sole of the shoe was too dark." So he grabbed a bottle of red nail polish from an assistant who was doing her nails nearby and painted the soles. "It didn't take me long to learn from my customers that...
...dropping of this other shoe makes the Pope seem more consistent, since there is much he clearly dislikes about American materialism and pop culture. Today he explained that "perhaps," after all, America's brand of secularism "poses a particular problem: it allows for professing belief in God... but at the same time it can subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator. Faith can become a passive acceptance... without practical relevance for everyday life. The result is a growing separation of faith from life." Combined with what he called our "individualistic and eclectic approach to faith," he said this...
...wears it then it's not cool enough for trendsetters like Manolo Blahnik or Anna Sui. Yet both designers are proudly part of a global club known as the Marimekkoites. Sui has been collecting vintage examples of the cheerful prints for years, and this spring Blahnik has created three shoe styles in Marimekko prints. H&M has launched a capsule collection this month featuring the most popular patterns from the 1950s to the 1970s. "Marimekko feels so modern," says Blahnik, who was reminded of the Unikko poppy's potency when he spotted it on a tea towel in a tourist...