January 21, 2026 |
Photography by Kasia Wozniak
Jaden Smith has little interest in easing in. Appointed Christian Louboutin’s first-ever men’s creative director in September of last year, today, he came out swinging with a red-hot AW26 debut collection that didn’t hedge its bets or soften its edges. Instead, it laid the high-octane groundwork for what Louboutin Men can become under his direction: confident, visual and unafraid of excess.
Louboutin’s iconic red stepped centre stage in the offering, rebirthed as much more than a gaze-stealing sole. As the collection’s backbone, the hue was translated into fur fraught brogues and mid-calf boots, as well as Chelseas seemingly seeped with wet paint. Classics, meanwhile, came rebooted for the future.
Smith’s instinct was to tweak rather than tear down, resulting in penny loafers appearing in traditional form alongside slingback and sandal iterations. Formal shoes meanwhile, were re-engineered to move fluidly between work and after-hours. Anchoring the collection with its polished authority, the Corteo was reframed as a uniform for modern working men, while the Trapman filtered 1990s hip-hop codes into a sharper, more considered shape. Function was taken seriously with the TCT I, imagined as the footwear equivalent of a tactical waterproof jacket.
Smith expanded accessories into bold ‘Christian Louboutin’ belts and multi-pocket carrier bags too, as well as baseball caps, cardholders and silver metalwork pieces: think key chains, necklaces and even a lighter case.
The creative director himself became part of the visual language, painting his face and body Louboutin red for the teasers that preceded the collection’s reveal. That saturation carried into the presentation, unveiled via an immersive exhibition that placed the accessories within what looked like a humongous, ceramic, human head – painted metallic red, of course – and cracked to pieces so the fash pack could step inside and get personal with the pieces. Alongside 360 degree video and image installations, the effect was intimate and slightly disorienting, as though the collection had been arranged as a series of thoughts mapped directly from the creative director’s mind.
Smith was inspired by the “history of working men throughout the centuries, the stone masons, the scribes, the doctors”, he said, “…by the lost epochs of time and made by hands born from stars forged under immense pressure deep in cosmic space.” Landing in stores and online tomorrow, the debut reads not as an experiment, but as a firmly drawn line under Louboutin Men’s next chapter.
Photography courtesy of Louboutin.
