Everyone Was in Shoe Heaven at the Opening of Christian Louboutin’s Exhibition in Paris

Christian Louboutin’s popularity is legendary. Even so, it speaks volumes that, a full hour before the start time on opening night for his 30th-anniversary retrospective L’Exhibition[niste]—way on the eastern fringe of Paris—throngs had happily gathered, dressed to the nines, and patiently hung around the grand Art Deco foyer of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, even without Champagne.

Louboutin rewarded guests including Janelle Monáe, Dita Von Teese, and Diane von Furstenberg with the kind of spectacle by which others will be measured for years to come. Judging by reactions, even die-hard Louboutin lovers who know their Pigalles from their Miss Clichys and So Kates—and those who actually know the fun-loving father of the covetable red soles—were quite simply blown away by the 11-room extravaganza. It was, as the designer said, a project two years (and a lifetime) in the making, crystallized with the help of Olivier Gabet, the head curator at the Museum of Decorative Arts (MAD).

Louboutin called the project a homecoming of sorts. “It’s a big mix of my work as well as what inspired it,” he said. “We just finished it yesterday.” In the mix are a love of Paris, of spectacle, of innovation, craftsmanship, and travel, from an early stint as a documentarian for Roger Vivier to a brief interlude as a landscape architect. “In the end, I realized that I didn’t have the patience to wait for a seedling to grow five meters high,” he told Vogue.

Landscaping’s loss was fashion’s gain. In the convergence of “exhibition” and “exhibitionism,” Louboutin goes to town, retracing a life well-shod from a first “no high heels” sign spotted as a child in this museum to his first designs—such as the Pansy pump—inspired by the museum’s tropical aquarium or an early internship at the Folies Bergère. From there, he moves on to more extravagant, cheeky, and fetishistic designs, as well as custom shoes crafted for the likes of Tina Turner and Dita Von Teese. But though this show is all about the shoes, it’s about so much more too: It’s a freewheeling meander through the designer’s psyche, complete with an English grandmother’s salon (that’s no ordinary chintz, however, and check out that grandfather clock), unexpected collaborations with artists (David Lynch, the Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi, the video artist Lisa Reihana, and craft schools in Bhutan), and a cabinet of curiosities of the designer’s favorite things.

But the part of the show that made Louboutin laugh the most was the installation of a hologram performance by Dita Von Teese: Every time the technicians ran a test, 10 workers would stop and watch, slack-jawed. “Everyone stopped working and just stood there,” he said. “We had to stop running tests on Dita, because every time we had to adjust something, everyone would stop working.” The one right after it, with the Guinean freestyle street artist Iya Traoré, is a showstopper too.

Aside from a closet full of Louboutins, the ultimate luxury would be to have the entire exhibition to oneself. Once it opens to the public tomorrow, that’s going to be a pipe dream too.