Famed shoemaker Christian Louboutin has turned out heels in leather and silk, but he's adding a new material to his portfolio: glass.

For a new collaboration with champagne-maker Piper-Heidsieck, Louboutin created a glass slipper that evokes both Cinderella fantasy and Parisian decadence. The shoe flute is packaged as part of the $500 Le Rituel gift set, which also includes a bottle of champagne. It will only be sold in select Neiman Marcus stores and online at www.le-rituel.com.

Drinking out of a lady's shoe is a tradition that dates to the 1880s, when Russian counts celebrated ballerinas by drinking out of their toe shoes. Later, the tradition was picked in Belle Epoque Paris on the stages of the Folies Bergère and other cabarets.

"There is something a little bit corny of drinking out of a shoe," Louboutin says. He wanted to suggest something sweeter. "I thought of Cinderella, so the shoe became a symbol of the lost person."

"I started very precisely [working] with the shape of 17th century glass that was not dedicated to Champagne but for liquor," Louboutin says. It was a Portugese glass that he twisted into a heel, and then attached a shoe.

Louboutin blushed slightly when asked if he had ever sipped bubbly from a lady's shoe. "Yes, I did. Very bad experience," he says. "It's provocative. It's odd for women [if you] drink out of their shoes. It's nothing you would do to just any woman."

"[But] I did it... and it worked."