Christian Louboutin's Great Indian Love Affair

The world's best-known footwear designer's recent capsule collection The Diwali Edit is testimony to it

- Shivangi Lolayekar

In a fashion landscape where designers often park themselves in a corner of understated and subtle or brazen and theatrical, you have a maestro like Christian Louboutin, who oscillates between these two wildly different universes like its child's play. For Louboutin, boldness and elegance aren't mutually exclusive. And he's been endorsing this for almost three decades.

The shoe impresario has been cushioning the feet of men and women in the sexiest, lushest, most distinguishable shoes replete with everything from porcupine-like spikes to zany metallic studs, neon accents, shimmering perforations and fantastical embellishments-all packaged with a classiness that empowers a wearer to say with pride that they're wearing a pair of Louboutin's. Forget that he's stamped them all with a signature red sole as a marker of fashion royalty status. Just ask every peacock, pop culture influencer and style savant, from Ranveer Singh to Lewis Hamilton, who're all patrons.

It's no wonder then that Louboutin is perhaps regarded as the most renowned footwear designer in the world. But it's really his love affair with India, that's made him all the more endearing to a local market. The Frenchman has been coming to our homeland since he was 16-he's now 61-and can outsmart you at your own local game. In a previous interview, at a time when he was showcasing a collaborative collection with Sabyasachi-a stalwart in his own right and a good friend of Louboutin's-in Mumbai to a giddy local fashion crowd, he casually name-dropped Madhuri Dixit and Amitabh Bachchan; spoke about Banarasi weaves; and gave me a comprehensive guide of Rajasthan that made me cower at my ignorance to his rich knowledge. However, it's not just our country's colourful offerings that satiate the designer's creative juices.