Christian Louboutin Helps To Restore His Boyhood Hangout

When the shoe designer Christian Louboutin was a boy growing up in eastern Paris, he would while away hours in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, an Art Deco building then used as a museum of the indigenous arts of Africa and Oceania, with an extensive aquarium in the basement. The museum, which designed by Albert Laprade for the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, had two oval rooms bookending the hall — one dedicated to Africa, the other to Asia. And next to their entrances hung a sign with a woman’s foot in a stiletto pump crossed by a red bar: No high heels. Piqued by the image, Mr. Louboutin began doodling similar shoes. A fetish — and a career — were born. About 18 months ago, Mr. Louboutin was recounting this story to France’s head of patrimony, the television personality Stéphane Bern. “That museum needs restoring,” Mr. Louboutin said Mr. Bern told him. “Things are wearing out. Call them.” Read more at The New York Times.