Tongues Are Wagging Over Shoes

Because everyone is talking so openly about sex these days, there should be no shame, in these pages, in discussing a few pairs of shoes.

“Shoes are such little sex objects,” Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, was saying as she pointed out the erotic attributes of an open-toe sandal, how it revealed a little crack of pinky cleavage, or a feathery Folies-Bergère pump with a peekaboo heel that she described in unprintable language. Grrr.

The shoes were by Christian Louboutin, the French designer whose styles are often recognizable by a signature design element, the carnal red sole. His work is, for the first time, the subject of a museum exhibition, which was curated by the graduate students of the fashion and textile studies program at F.I.T.

Since it opened last week, the show has drawn a surprising amount of interest, perhaps because it is in a small, dark hallway behind the museum’s main galleries, kind of like a back room for foot fetishists.

“Oooh, I want those sandals,” a young woman said.

“Hey, he has a store on Madison Avenue,” a middle-aged father said. “We should check that out.”

Mr. Louboutin’s shoes seem inherently to cast a burlesque tone upon their audience. There are examples, under a heading of “Fetish,” that suggest a prurient love of patent leather and metal studs, and further along the corridor one will find a pair of shiny black shoes with metal heels so tall that only the tippy toe touches the ground.

Much is made of the red soles, as the exhibition notes that Mr. Louboutin may have been responding to the color of Andy Warhol’s poppy prints, an assistant’s red nail polish or the historical association of red heels with the aristocracy (as illustrated with a photograph of a Louis XIV portrait). Mostly, it was the glamour and eroticism associated with the color.

Still, one pair of shoes could be described as sweet: black suede flats from 1991 with the word LOVE in appliqué. They were inspired by a photograph of Princess Diana looking forlornly at her feet. Mr. Louboutin thought that if she had been looking at those shoes, she would have been smiling.

Eric Wilson - NY Times