“Red is the main character of the stories that we tell.” This is how the first ever Men’s Creative Director for Christian Louboutin, Jaden Smith, describes his debut collection. Emerging red-faced (he literally painted his face and torso red) onto the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, Smith’s debut collection has been controversial to say the least. His appointment to the position in September 2025 caused waves in the fashion community for several reasons. To begin with, it’s the first time that Maison Christian Louboutin has ever had a Creative Director. Moreover, this role was bestowed to someone best known for starring inThe Karate Kid and being the son of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It’s only natural that Smith’s appointment would raise some serious questions about the extent to which nepotism and celebrity is superseding artistic talent in the fashion industry at present.
To simply discredit Smith on the basis of being a ‘nepo-baby’ is unproductive. After all, the fashion industry is one that has long been deemed dynasty-driven, with many of the most famous houses starting as family businesses and being passed down from fathers to sons, such as Hermès or Gucci. Nonetheless, in the last five years there has been a wave of high-profile and celebrity-adjacent, non-traditional appointments to creative director roles in fashion. Whilst celebrity endorsements have long been common in fashion, what we are seeing now is different: this is not simply the role of a brand ambassador, rather Smith is a celebrity being granted sole creative direction of a brand. One of the first, and perhaps the most significant example of this was Pharrell Williams’ appointment as the Men’s Creative Director of Louis Vuitton in February 2023, with a stated goal to bridge the gap between luxury fashion, music, and pop culture. While Williams had been involved in the fashion world since the early 2000s, founding his streetwear brand Billionaire Boys Club in 2003, and later a subsidiary line named ICECREAM in 2004, he notably lacks any formal design training.
Many would argue that this kind of formal education is no longer a requirement for creative direction – you can’t be taught to have creative vision, so to speak, and streetwear designers frequently have less formal fashion education than traditional luxury designers, falling back on self-taught skills and hands-on experience. But while creativity certainly doesn’t require a diploma, skill, or at the very least a basic knowledge of working with textiles, is essential to understanding craftsmanship in fashion. This is attested by the prevalence of the apprenticeship as a popular form of education in fashion. Consider Alexander McQueen and the emphasis the brand still places on quality tailoring, honouring the late designer’s start as a tailor’s apprentice on Savile Row. While Jaden Smith does have previous experience in creative industries, ranging from collaborations with established brands, to his streetwear label MSFTSrep, his debut collection exposes his lack of hands-on experience and limited traditional design training.
His debut collection for Christian Louboutin, unveiled during Paris Fashion Week 2026, was met with mixed reactions. Louboutin contends that Smith’s appointment was driven by a desire to inject a modern vision into the brand’s men’s line. Hence Smith, a multifaceted artist with previous experience in streetwear, seemed like just the person to embody this new brand direction. However, rather than modern, his designs ranged from uninspired (I would hardly call a red leather sneaker the height of innovation) to frankly ridiculous, prompting a stream of memes expressing concern that Smith skinned beloved Sesame Street character Elmo for a pair of £2,300 boots covered in vibrant red goat hair.
Another personal highlight of the collection was the harness-inspired bag, which looked less high-fashion and more like the result of a bizarre collaboration between Go Outdoors and Ann Summers, producing practical hiking attire for the BDSM enthusiasts among us. This is not to say that avant-garde design hasn’t been subject to ridicule throughout history – if you’re going to push the boundaries of any medium it is bound to be met with some resistance. But where Smith’s ‘Well Red’ vision truly falls flat is that this ‘boldness’ feels hollow and superficial. The only thing that feels truly luxurious about the collection is the price tag.
Once the internet trolls have had their fun, we are left with the glaring realisation: a 27-year-old with limited experience can’t handle the mammoth task of crafting collections across everything from Louboutin’s iconic red-soled footwear, to leather goods and accessories. While fashion has never been a field fuelled by meritocracy, perhaps it’s time that we stepped away from the pattern of blindly granting celebrities creative direction. It’s about time we started spotlighting creatives with actual experience and expertise in the field. Appointments like Smith’s perpetuate the notion of fashion as a meaningless and shallow art form, one simply exploited for status and lacking any real artistic substance. If we are to save the status of fashion we need to shift the emphasis back toward the garments at the heart of this medium, not the creative directors.
