While Christian Louboutin is always a name you can find in magazines and on discerning fashionistas, the designer made headlines a few months back with the Christian Louboutin’s ‘The Nude Collection’, a shoe line that helped fashion take another step towards diversity.
By Nicole Kirichanskaya
Photo: Christian Louboutin
The whole purpose to wearing “Nude” shoes is to elongate your legs; Wearing nude shoes gives into the illusion of having longer legs as both shoe and flesh are now the same color, thus complimenting both a woman’s figure and outfit since the focus isn’t on the shoes she is wearing. Christian Louboutin was inspired to create this collection when one of his employees remarked that the standard “nude” color (a beige-y, pink tone) for the shoes he designed was not her version of nude. Christian Louboutin has always been a man known to make woman deliriously happy with his designs, and when he realized how large a market of women he was excluding(considering his designs are shipped to all parts of the world) ,he immediately set to rectify his mistake. Thus, was the inspiration for The Nude Collection, which comes in various styles of high heels, and most recently, flats – in seven different “nude” shades.
Pictured below are some available hot “Nude” Louboutin styles in the market, previous to the newly incorporated shades:
The collection was designed in mind of helping out women who wanted to create the illusion of endlessly long legs with a pair of nude heels, but couldn’t find a pair of shoes in their version of “nude”. To investigate if this collection actually delivers what it was promising, a few colleagues and I went to the Christian Louboutin boutique on Madison Ave, New York; I was informed, this store was the only one in the entire city that still carried this collection, having been sold out everywhere else. Even on the Christian Louboutin retail site, several sizes of this collection are completely sold out and stock is slow to replenish.
Christian Louboutin Boutique on Madison Avenue, New York
New Nude Collection:
Turns out the idea for this collection was as popular as I had predicted, so when my colleagues and I arrived at the boutique we were informed that there were only a limited number of tones and sizes left, so this ended up slightly biasing our results.
My first associate, let’s call her E, tried on “Nats” N°1 (the palest shade of the collection), my second associate, let’s call her D, tried on “Nats” N°3, while I tried on “Nats” N°2 (the collection comes in a total of seven different shades); the middle tones in the collection were completely sold out in our respective sizes, and the last two tones of the collection left were too dark for any of our respective skin tones.
Christian Louboutin “Nats” N°1
Christian Louboutin “Nats” N°2
Christian Louboutin’s “Nats” N°3
For E and myself, both of the respective shoes we tried on were too yellow for our complexion, since we both have pink undertones in our skin with variation in shades.
E’s Testimony:
“I was really excited to go check out the Christian Louboutin Nudes Collection as the collection is of high demand and sold out in many stores. The idea of elongating my leg with a nude that matched my exact skin tone and my friends’ skin tones sounded revolutionary in the fashion world. Despite the fact that boutique’s inventory was low, I was disappointed to find out that the nude did not match my skin tone quite as I imagined. Furthermore, I was upset that the nude heel did not match D’ skin tone either. However, I think the collection is too premature to get a full experience with finding the right skin tone or “number” as the inventory was very low at the boutique.”
While for my other colleague, D, who is a sandy shade of caramel, she was disappointed to find that the shade she tried on was too dark for her skin.
D’s Testimony:
“The infamous “red bottoms” are a must have in every woman’s luxury closet. As it was my first time trying on Louboutins, my expectations were high for the special nude collection by Christian Louboutin, as I have trouble finding the right nude shoe for my shade. I initially thought that the sales person was going to find my exact shade of color. I tried on the Pigalle Follies “Nats” N°3 from the Nude Collection, Number 3 was close to my skin color, but it did not match as I thought it would. In my opinion, I would still purchase them in the future because, it still matches my skin tone somewhat, compared to the regular “nude” shoes out in the stores.”
Pigalle Follies “Nats” N°3
As for me, it became apparent that this collection was designed for women who were in the “in-between” shades of “nude” fashion. Furthermore, this collection was designed to help elongate legs, not necessarily match a woman’s ‘exact’ skin tone. Trying on the ‘traditional’ nude tone (a beige-y pink) in the store, E and I noted that while our complexions were paler than the shoe itself, it matched our tones far more accurately than the shoes in the Nudes Collection had. Unfortunately, for our teammate, D, she didn’t have quite the same luck with this shoe or several others in the store (though being a boutique, there was only a select number of shoes and styles available that day).
The Nude collection was created for the worldwide market, including customers of African and Asian descent, but for those of us who are in between (such as those of European or mixed descent), the fashion industry still has a long way to go before there is a shoe out there that matches our shades of nude.
Everything aside, the collection itself was exquisitely designed, and despite missing a few shades, it was definitely was a step in the right direction for the fashion industry, which has for too long, assumed there is only one version of “nude”. I think we can all agree that here is absolutely no one version of “Nude”.
-NS
