Louboutin’s Loubi Show: homecoming in Paris

A sporting ritual can become choreography without losing its sense of a crowd. The Loubi Show described in WAYFARER’s October 2025 archive used American homecoming imagery as the basis for a performance in Paris.

Christian Louboutin reunited with David LaChapelle and Blanca Li, following their earlier aquatic presentation. This time, the setting was the Dojo Arena, a real sports venue whose scale became part of the production rather than a backdrop to be concealed.

LaChapelle directed the visual world and Li shaped the choreography across five acts. The Paris firefighters’ marching band opened the evening. Cheerleading groups and dancers developed the sporting vocabulary, with staged American-football sequences and live music building towards a collective finale.

The original report placed fashion and cultural guests around that performance, among them Jaden Smith, Jenna Ortega and Gwendoline Christie. Their presence framed the event, but the central material was movement: coordinated bodies, musical cues and the familiar grammar of a stadium celebration.

Read as an archive, the show records a shift from displaying an object to constructing a scene around it. The venue supplied a set of recognisable rituals. Choreography reorganised them. Paris became the setting for an imported sporting memory, translated through performance rather than repeated unchanged.

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Adapted from the WAYFARER Brazil archive, first published 2025-10-06. English adaptation: 6 October 2026. This is an archival account, not a report of a new visit. Exhibitions, collections and menu details are described in their original context, not as current availability.