Christian Louboutin in an interview with French newspaper Libération (translation via Vogue UK) laid out his case against YSL for designing a shoe featuring a red sole:
“….it is a red in a specific context [in the way that], there is Ferrari red [and] Hermès orange. Even in the food industry, Cadbury recently won a lawsuit against Nestlé for using purple packaging. All this proves that the colours play a part in a brand’s identity. I’m not saying that red usually belongs to me – I repeat that this is about a precise red, used in a precise location.”
He also shed some light on his own relationship with PPR, a publically-traded company, which owns YSL and has made numerous offers to buy Christian Louboutin, all of which Louboutin has turned down. He then flips from business to personal, going in on YSL’s decision to design shoes with red soles:
“I find it most incredible that a group like PPR would take the risk of defending itself as a plagiarist. They claim to fight against counterfeiting and plagiarism of which they are victims and yet behave like this.”
What a distraction this must be for Louboutin. I wonder sometimes if he doesn’t think, why did we even bother with this in the first place. After all, even though he isn’t the first to do red soles, among people in the know, that design element is metaphorically owned by him. But something in his gut must be telling him to fight another day so in the end we just hope he has his way for reasons we posted here. If he does not, it will be intriguing to see what the fall out will be.
