Not long ago, Federica di Martino, a young actress visiting New York from Rome, sauntered into Christian Louboutin’s West Village boutique and slipped on a pair of six-inch stilettos. Perched on those heels, she was a knockout. But could she walk? Sure, she said, laughing as she leaned against the front door for support. “I can make it from here to the opposite end of the store.”

Function, for its own sake, has never ranked high on Mr. Louboutin’s list of priorities. For proof, look no further than the designer’s latest project, a collection of 31 violently colorful nail lacquers housed in a jewel-like faceted glass bottle, with a conical cap as spiky and tall as a steeple.

It’s a statement piece for sure, perhaps better suited for display than breezy application.

“The bottle is not practical,” Mr. Louboutin acknowledged last week. “But just as a high heel may slow your walk, this long cap obliges you to take some time to paint your nails.” His aim, he said, was “to bring beauty to the side of fine arts,” to create a rarefied object that assumes pride of place on a woman’s dressing table.

That sort of elegance comes at a price, a swoon-inducing one at that. Mr. Louboutin is not the first designer to affix his name to a luxury lacquer. He was preceded by, among others, Jason Wu, Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford, whose polish sells for $32 a bottle. But he is the first to reach the $50 barrier, a nervy move conceived to elevate nail polish to an unprecedentedly lofty terrain.