Christian Louboutin on style, animism, and how gardening inspires his designs

Christian Louboutin will go to great lengths to outfit his prized garden; seven hectares of high-maintenance landscaping at his 13th-century French chateau in France’s Vendée region. “I do have the, how do you say? Green fingers,” he laughs. “I will always bring back plants from my travels. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but I’ve been smuggling them from everywhere. The only place I don’t think I’ve brought a plant from is in England, though, which is odd because I spend so much time here.”

As such, the garden at Chateau de Champgillon, a property he has co-owned with his business partner Bruno Chambelland for more than 25 years, is established and thriving, filled with everything from Chinese and Japanese wisteria, to an orangerie growing kumquats and mandarins. The team at contemporary gardening magazine Rakesprogress were so taken with his lot, that they commissioned photographer Jane Hilton to capture a series ‘Digging His Heels In’ which is on display until the end of this week on Covent Garden’s Floral Street.

Hilton’s images capture Louboutin in a blissed-out state, sniffing great peonies and pottering around lawns with friends. “I find gardening very relaxing now,” he says of how his work makes him feel. “From an early age I have been an Animist, even before I understood what that meant. I don’t believe in God, I believe in energies and life of different forms - trees, plants, animals. When I did discover what it meant I felt totally at ease with the idea.”

Louboutin almost made landscape gardening his full-time career at the end of the 1980s. He had dropped out of school in Paris at the age of 16, gained, by pure luck and charisma, an internship at Christian Dior after meeting Countess Hélène de Mortemart and had worked briefly as a secretary to Roger Vivier. In 1988 he made a sideways career move and began working on topiaries and gardens while he contributed to Vogue, before realising that his true passion was in fact to design shoes, and founded his eponymous line in 1991.

“When you’re a designer you look at the line structures, forms and colour combinations of everything you see,” he explains of how the two disciplines relate, for him. “Many designers think of paintings, but if I close my eyes I would see nature. The colours and the textures just add up for me. A magnolia is a thick leather, probably patent. A pansy is definitely suede or velvet. When I think of what colours look good together on a shoe, it’s usually ones that I have thought look good together in the garden. I don’t make moodboards, this is how I research.”

His gardening uniform is a basic one - a panama hat and wellingtons. “I am never barefoot,” he says. “It’s mostly wellingtons and not of my own design, but perhaps soon I will make some. I always carry a secateur, even if I’m only going outside for five minutes. There is always something to clip and if there is truly nothing, I will clip my nails instead.”

The Rakesprogress pop up at 13 Floral Street, Covent Garden, is open to the public until 7th December.