Pharrell Remade Louis Vuitton in His Own Image
Pharrell's June 2023 Louis Vuitton menswear debut felt huge because it was huge. The blockbuster presentation was overwhelming, covetable, and, honestly, maybe just a touch disjointed.
Hard to imagine that anyone could create a 100+-look collection that felt entirely cohesive, to be fair, but it wasn't obvious at first blush what, if any, throughline connected the many, many, many outfits of Pharrell's first LV menswear collection.
Six-ish months later and it's actually become quite clear that everything that Pharrell's done at Louis Vuitton, from his first runway show to the Fall/Winter 2024 menswear collection that debuted in Paris on January 16 has actually had a pretty obvious, singular piece of connective tissue: Pharrell himself. Duh.
To at least some degree, every fashion house's creative director shapes the company they work at in their own image. That's the POV that gets these folks hired, you know.
Virgil Abloh famously did it during his own tenure at Louis Vuitton, for instance, incorporating technical jackets and baggy jeans similar to the stuff he himself wore. Seasonal inspirations and collaborations — Michael Jackson, Futura, The Wizard of Oz, Lucien Clarke— were all Abloh, done up in an LV kinda way.
Unlike nearly every other creative director since Lindsay Lohan's tenure at Ungaro, though, Pharrell was an incredibly famous figure for decades prior to his appointment at Louis Vuitton.
As, such we know what his personal style codes are, we've witnessed his own many memorable fashion moments.
Pharrell's in good company at LVMH, really, as the conglomerate draws in cultish figures with noted resumes as if it's a $200 sushi place: rock 'n roll guru Hedi Slimane has brought big bucks to CELINE; Matthew Williams was streetwear royalty even before Givenchy; and, well, Virgil Abloh needs no introduction. Don't forget that Rihanna's short-lived fashion brand was an LVMH venture.
Aside from Rih-Rih, though, none of the other folks before or since can hold a candle to Pharrell in terms of fame and, as such, it's quite simple to identify the Pharrell present in today's Louis Vuitton clothes. Actually, it's extremely easy!
At LV's FW24 menswear show, for instance, there were cowboy hats akin to Pharrell's Big Hat (poor Vivienne Westwood never gets credited), graphic puffer jackets indicative of early days at Billionaire Boys Club, collaborative Timberland boots (made in Italy, of course), leather double rider's jackets, flared jeans, washed-out workwear, and enough redone LV trunks to store the luggage of an entire prep school.
This isn't just stuff that Pharrell has worn in the past, this is Pharrell, period.
Even the FW24 show's theme was undistilled Pharrell.
It manifested the countrified vibes of rural Virginia, Pharrell's home state, into luxury blue collar gear like shearling ranch coats and LV-monogrammed double-knee jeans, soundtracked by music co-created with Native Voices of Resistance, Mumford & Sons, chicken-fried rapper Jelly Roll, and Miley Cyrus (she is the daughter of Billy Ray, after all).
The show's backdrop, a desolate Virginian mountain range, was dappled with snow by show's end, when a troupe of Dakota and Lakota nation musicians entered to cap the presentation. (several of the collection's hand-painted, embroidered, and charm-laden bags evoke traditional parfleche containers with their own Native motifs)
You can't say Pharrell ain't a showman. However, you can say that LV FW24 was easily Pharrell's best show yet, delivering the completeness lacking from his first outing and a couple wardrobes-worth of genuinely excellent clothes to boot. To cowboy boot, even.
Everything he's done since joining Louis Vuitton has shifted the luxury label closer to his world.
Pharrell's jaw-droppingly expensive handbags inspired by Canal Street bootlegs are simultaneously redolent of Neptunes-era sampling and Pharrell's color-blasted aughts fashion, for instance.
And he's not just having his friends (like Beyoncé, A$AP Rocky, and Pusha T) sit front-row or even walk the runway: they're modeling his LV campaigns.
Pharrell and Louis Vuitton are entwined in manner atypical of even the highly personal world of luxury fashion. Not so strange that a brand's output would mirror the whims of its creative director; fairly unusual that the creative director is himself as famous as the house he works at.
As such, Pharrell's vision for Louis Vuitton becomes so much clearer when you don't just look at it as Louis Vuitton by Pharrell but Pharrell by Louis Vuitton.
Pharrell's just doing Pharrell and why not? It's worked pretty well for him so far.
