On a Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before his debut show as Louis Vuitton Men’s creative director, Pharrell Williams invited journalists into a small conference room at LV’s headquarters in Paris to preview a few pieces from his upcoming collection. He’s in a zen-like but spirited mood, wearing a double-breasted blazer, flared pants with a pixelated digi camo print, a Human Made hat, and his signature gold grills.
“Every day I pinch myself like, man, is this real?” says Williams when asked how he feels in this exact moment. “It’s a crazy mixture of shock and awe at the amount of resources [I have] and working with so many masterful artisans every day. Like whoa. It’s a different feeling.”
Oftentimes when designers detail their inspirations, they wax poetic about a piece of art, a film, a location, or a historic figure that’s the starting point for their collection. Virgil Abloh, for example, offered up copious show notes that almost felt like a thesis. But with Pharrell, his approach is less about philosophical musings or extensive research and more about the customer, who he also happens to be. He told The New York Times he sees himself as less of a creative director and more of a client.
Williams describes the LV consumer as someone with disposable income who either runs a company or owns one, and his goal is to provide that customer with all of their wardrobe needs. Therefore, he broke the collection up into five pillars: Dandy (formal wear); Comfort (for running errands or taking a flight); Resort (for vacationing); Sport (for physical activities); and Core Staples (the special hit pieces he plans on iterating each season). And to better understand this customer (i.e., himself) he reimagined LV as standing for “LVovers” (a play on his home state’s slogan, “Virginia Is for Lovers”).
“The question is are you a lover of life? Are you a lover of details? Are you a lover of expeditions, excursions? If you are, we're gonna design for that,” Williams says.
It’s a very commercial strategy, but it’s not dissimilar to how many luxury fashion brands operate (most just aren’t vocal about it). It’s also not a surprising strategy coming from Pharrell, who has spent most of his adult life working with some of the most successful artists in the world, understanding their motivations and the story they want to tell, and then formulating some of their biggest hits with his Neptunes production partner Chad Hugo. These are songs that appeal to the masses and become ubiquitous, but avoid sounding generic. In 2003 the Neptunes produced 43 percent of the songs on the radio. It’s not an easy feat, but Williams is very good at catering to many people without losing his individuality and while helping an artist that’s bigger than him become even bigger. He’s taking that same approach at Louis Vuitton.
Most guests arrived at the Pont Neuf venue, the oldest bridge in Paris that’s right outside of LV’s headquarters, by boat. We slowly floated along the Seine river past the massive Louis Vuitton ad featuring a pregnant Rihanna carrying Pharrell’s new, colorful takes on the LV Speedy bag and holding a cup of coffee as if she’s ready to take on the world. On his Skateboard finsta, Pharrell revealed the reference for that image (a picture taken by Japanese street photographer Keizō Kitajima when he spent six months shooting in New York City during the ‘80s). Seeing the ad in person has more heft than it does via a cell phone screen. It feels imposing and powerful, and it sets the tone for the type of Black, celebrity-driven storytelling Pharrell will offer while in this position. “To be able to do that, to have a campaign with one of the biggest icons on the planet who happens to be a Black woman with child… It's not lost on me that I'm afforded this opportunity to tell these stories,” Pharrell says.
Once at the venue, guests walked along a gold Damier checkerboard runway that felt as if it was the size of a football field. Showgoers milled about as champagne was served, the sun set, and then an artificial light coming from two spotlight panels bathed the venue in a warm glow. “When I got this appointment, the first thing that was very clear to me was that the sun was shining on me and shining on my team,” says Pharrell. “I guess the philosophical question that we pose to everybody is when the sun is shining on you, what will you do?”
With the sun shining on him, Pharrell decided to create a collection that could have been plucked from his own wardrobe. If you’ve studied Pharrell’s looks over the years, the silhouettes and pieces on the runway looked familiar, merging Pharrell’s penchant for streetwear, luxury, skate, and tailoring. There was the red varsity jacket he wore in the early 2000s with the “PA” emblem—standing for Princess Anne, the Virginia Beach high school he attended. He redesigned it for Louis Vuitton by embellishing it with rhinestones and adding a Louis Vuitton script logo. There were fur coats that brought to mind a Roberto Cavalli fur Pharrell wore often in 2004. There were collarless jackets coming in denim or tweed with pearl embellishments inspired by the Chanel jackets Pharrell’s donned. And there was the camouflage print he’s gravitated to over the years, now reinvisioned as “Damoflage,” which merges camo with Louis Vuitton’s Damier pattern. The print was featured on denim, knits, fur, and tailoring. He had a lot of ideas, but he utilized through lines to make the collection feel cohesive. And although the assortment was self-referential, it didn’t read as Pharrell cosplay or too nostalgic.
The clothes were solid and sellable, but design innovation from Pharrell was most apparent with his accessories. Pharrell said the Speedy handbags were supposed to embody the spirit of Canal Street. He made them in bold colors like cobalt, kelly green, yellow, and cherry red using a supple, collapsible leather instead of the stiff canvas LV typically uses for its handbags. They felt new but vintage at the same time and will sell well (Tyler, the Creator was already carrying the red style at the show). He also produced Louis Vuitton trunks in a shiny copper color and the Damoflage print, presenting them on the runway like precious cargo—a model drove them out on a golf cart. Pharrell added colors like red, green, and yellow to the classic Damier print bags, which are usually brown and beige. And sunglasses were interesting, including a pair attached to a gold head clasp accentuated by pearls.
The collection was a study in Black style, which centers around reinvention and reappropriation; taking pieces that weren’t originally meant for Black audiences and reinterpreting them to suit our needs without waiting for brands to acknowledge them—Pharrell said he learned about Louis Vuitton via Dapper Dan’s bootleg designs in the ‘80s, which fully embodied this idea. The event also showcased the power of Black celebrity and how much LVMH depends on it for cultural currency. Pharrell is an ideal expression of that, and he put on a SHOW, playing a new Pusha T verse that might have included a Jim Jones diss, tapping a gospel choir to perform “Joy,” a new song he produced, casting folks like Jerrod Carmichael and Clipse to walk the runway, and inviting a slew of celebrities including Beyoncé, Jay-Z, who performed after the show, Rihanna, ASAP Rocky, Zendaya, Tyler, the Creator, LeBron James, and more to sit front row—many of these celebrities have formal business relationships with LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton. .
There is something that feels performative about tapping powerful Black figures to front campaigns or creative direct brands, but not seeing a trickle down effect internally (at the end of the show Pharrell walked out with the LV team who worked on the collection and I didn’t see many Black or brown faces). But I do believe Pharrell being in this position represents something meaningful. Maybe that’s because I remember when Jay-Z helped popularize Iceberg, an Italian fashion brand, but when he and Damon Dash met with the company in an attempt to build a collection they rejected the idea, which led to the creation of Rocawear. Or I remember when Jay-Z stopped drinking Cristal in 2006 because an exec at the champagne company said he didn’t condone the brand’s affiliation with hip-hop (in 2021 LVMH acquired a 50 percent stake in his champagne brand Armand de Brignac). And when I hear Jay-Z perform “Niggas in Paris” at the show, in Paris, and Kanye West’s verse plays, I can’t help but think about the infamous Paris Fashion Week image taken by Tommy Ton in 2009, when West, Virgil Abloh, Don C, Taz Arnold, Chris Julian, and Fonzworth Bentley were demanding to be seen and sneaking into shows. Pharrell in this position represents their acknowledgement of Black culture and its influence, but there’s still more work to be done. And Pharrell might have more tricks up his sleeve. When asked about a potential Louis Vuitton skateboard league, he says that’s a “wait and see.”
Towards the end of the group interview, a reporter who wasn’t American asks Pharrell why he believes Black American culture has taken over the world.
“Umm, I don’t know. I think we just have a different kind of sauce and people like it when they try it. And these corporations are waking up slowly but surely. They're understanding that we have flavor and that we have something really interesting to offer in a world that is a beautiful world, but historically and factually it's been whitewashed in a way,” says Pharrell. “We just wish that our culture and our people didn't have to suffer so hard in order to get us here. But again, it's not lost on me that a lot of people died. A lot of people lost their lives and suffered through their experiences to get us to these positions.”