October 3, 2026 |
“Bravo Dita,” shouted a man to my right. “I love you Dita,” said another from behind. All around, fashion folk in their finest feathers and glitzy garb were clapping with an impassioned glee that could only be conjured by a legend of the stage like Dita Von Teese.
Employed by Christian Louboutin to star in its SS27 performance, Eternal Youth: A Fairytale of Empowerment, Von Teese played a star of the stage who kills her attention-grabbing younger co-star with a glitter gun before embarking on an all-dancing odyssey to reclaim her inner power.
The message? Glamour and a desire to be noticed are not the same thing. Glamour is an inherent ability to enchant – a definition which Louboutin feels has become a forgotten treasure in an attention economy fuelled by grabby, sensationalised content that loudly demands our focus.
But for a short, sweet time on the Friday evening of Paris Fashion Week, inside the city’s grand Théâtre du Châtelet, glamour – true, rich glamour – was everywhere. Von Teese was as wonderfully theatrical as you’d hope: her signature black barnet curled into its perfectly satisfying lick, topped with a crown by Stephen Jones, and paired with a white bejewelled corset by corsetry legend Mister Pearl and a delicate matching cape by John Galliano.
She applied her famous red lip in an oversized dressing-room mirror, flew above the stage suspended by scarlet ribbons and culminated the performance with a striptease revealing sparkling nipple covers before being doused in gold glitter. Louboutin himself even made a cameo towards the end, flying around the stage and flipping upside down in a red soldier suit. It was glitz, glamour, drama – the lot. And the adoring crowd lapped up every second.
Photography courtesy of Christian Louboutin.
