Ballet would be nowhere without Paris’s Académie Royale de Danse. Established in 1661 by Louis XIV, who had a penchant for all things terpsichorean, it became the Western world’s first dance school. It was within its walls that, by the 1720s, dancer Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo convinced leading ballerinas to abandon heeled shoes for slippers, and where a century later, Marie Taglioni popularized the art of dancing en pointe, using nothing but a few tufts of cotton wool to pad her feet. By the dawn of the 1900s, Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova had pioneered a more strategic—and controversial—construction, whipping across the stage in slippers buttressed with leather supports and a flattened box toe to protect her famously high arches. The modern pointe slipper was born.
With its delicate creases of folded silk and reinforced toe, the shoe remains a stirring embodiment of elegance and grit. This year, the silhouette serves as the muse for Louboutin’s recurring capsule collection Nudes, released in an array of tones designed to disappear against the skin. The hero of the Parisian label’s offering is the Cassia Lace Up—with its square toe, sensual stiletto heel, and crepe satin finish—which ties with satin ribbon at the ankle, an homage to the laborious lacing-up pre-performance ritual.
For the issue, photographer Chiara Gabellini staged the collection in a setting a world away from the ballet studio: Eero Saarinen’s TWA Hotel, a mid-century marvel tucked in the anarchic sprawl of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
“THE WEIGHT OF WORDS IS IMPORTANT—NUDE IS NOT A BEIGE COLOR, BUT A CONCEPT. IT SHOULD BE PLURAL TO REFLECT THE FULL SPECTRUM OF SKIN TONES.”—CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Hair by Karl Payton
Makeup by Ernest Robinson
Modeling by Stella Rose Gahan, Cora Longwirth, Giannina Antonette Oteto, and Marisha Urushadze
Production by Dionne Cochrane
Casting by Gabellini and Cochrane
Photography Assistance by Peyton Brockhoeft
Styling assistance by Shola Shodipo
Makeup Assistance by Derrick Bernard
Production Assistance by Britany Thompson
Location: TWA Hotel
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