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"Like everyone on the planet, I love Christian Louboutin. I met him at a dinner party in Paris before he was a household name and watched his career take off. Years ago (I can't remember how many), he called me to say he was entering the beauty business\u2014and he was full of ideas, talking a mile a minute. Louboutin's new nail-polish collection is now a thing. I sat down with Christian at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City to discuss his latest fetish.\\n\\n\\n\\n                   \\n\\n__Why start with nail polish?__ \\\"People approached me for years to do fragrance, but that didn't make sense to me. I design shoes. I know about toes. When I do the look books for the shoes, I'm always trying to find the best nail color to work with them. I even painted the nails white and then tried putting Pantone on them in postproduction, but it didn't work at all. [And I started by painting the bottom of my first shoes with red nail polish.](http://www.wwd.com/beauty-industry-news/color-cosmetics/louboutin-enters-the-beauty-arena-7808363)\\\"\\n\\n\\n\\n__What was your first step?__ \\\"I originally approached Oscar Niemeyer, the architect who created Brasilia, and he was interested in doing the packaging but had too many projects, so we agreed to talk about it a year from our first conversation. Then he died at 104\\\\. But I kept him in mind as I thought about the nail polish and my beauty line. I was thinking about the story of a town.\\\"\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n \\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  __Tell me about that crazy bottle.__ \\\"The bottom of the bottle is very French, cut crystal. And I wanted the top to be an *obelisque,* like La Concorde. The symbol of the obelisk is from ancient Egypt. The earth was covered in sea, and out of the sea, land started to form. It was like a mountain. Out of the sea, out of chaos. The sun touched the tip and it emerged as a kind of spike. The obelisk is the beginning of my life in beauty. I rounded the obelisk and rounded it to give it back to women. The idea was to marry ancient Egypt with Paris. But the obelisk was too thick, too masculine. So I shaped it and shaped it. And I modeled it after the highest heel I've ever done, for the ballerina photographs [*Fetish by David Lynch.*](http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/fetish-by-david.php) For the bottle itself, I wanted something very faceted, like a crystal from Murano, like what Marie Brandolini used to create in Venice, where you have a bubble of crystal floating in a piece of architecture. The ultimate heel and the obelisk.\\\"\\n\\n\\n\\n*[Note: Lynch created a short film about the new polish collection that you can watch [here](http://us.christianlouboutin.com/us_en/discover-red).]*\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n \\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  __Most polish bottles are much smaller. Is this practical?__ \\\"No. But just as a high heel slows your walk, this long cap obliges you to take some time to paint your nails. I understand nail salons and speed. I'm not against it. But I want people to slow the pace. Beauty is about taking care of yourself. The biggest luxury is time and space. Space for yourself. The cap is heavy, and I made it that way. Like a piece of jewelry, you want it to feel heavy. Luxurious. I weighted it so when you hold it you feel the weight. This is an object of beauty. When I'm designing shoes, I think of legs. The gesture of walking has to be beautiful. With the nail polish, the gesture of painting them has to be beautiful. For me it's very important.\\\"\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n \\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  __Were you wary of expanding into a new arena?__\\\"If I enter beauty, every single angle of beauty has to be respected. Not just the color on the nails but the process and the object. You can put this on a table and it has to look nice. You can put two bottles by a window and they become decorative objects. I wanted the polish to have a depth in the lacquer. Real Chinese lacquer is made of 20 to 25 layers, which give you the depth of color. But with this nail polish, you get depth in two coats.\\\"\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n \\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  __In addition to red, how many colors will there be?__ \\\"I did three families of color. There are neutrals, nudes. Doing shoes, I saw that the toes look longer if you don't have color. So if you have short toes, nudes look better. Short nails also look good with nudes. Like the nude shoes I do for different skin colors, I have different shades of nude polish, from very fair to very dark. There's the reds, *les rouges,* from dark red to light red. And then there's the pop\u2014color, brights. Complementary colors for shoes.\\\"\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n \\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  *The first polish shade, Rouge Louboutin, is available now at Saks Fifth Avenue. The full collection will launch in September. Louboutin also plans to open a beauty boutique in Paris this winter.*\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  __RELATED LINKS:__\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  \u2022 [30 Nail Polishes to Get You Through the Summer](http://www.allure.com/beauty-products/2014/summer-nail-polishes\\\\#slide=1)\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  \u2022 [The 28 Most Frequently Mispronounced Fashion and Beauty Words](http://www.allure.com/beauty-trends/how-to/2011/most-frequently-mispronounced-fashion-and-beauty-words\\\\#intro)\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n  \u2022 [12 Major Manicure Mistakes You're Probably Making](http://www.allure.com/beauty-trends/blogs/daily-beauty-reporter/2014/06/manicure-nail-polish-mistakes.html)"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.allure.com/story/christian-louboutin-new-nail-polish>