Pharrell Williams Talks Reinvention & Legacy At Louis Vuitton
Last June, as the sun began to set on Paris Fashion Week, attendees eagerly awaited the semi-annual event’s long-anticipated final show. Expectations for the Louis Vuitton presentation — Pharrell Williams’s debut show as the label’s men’s creative director — were impossibly high throughout the French capital. After all, one of the world’s most sought-after superstars being handed the golden reins of LVMH, Europe’s most valuable company? Who knew what that marriage might produce? And yet, the grand unveiling delivered even more spectacle and showmanship than anticipated.
The show made clear that Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2024 collection — and Pharrell’s first since his appointment to the new role in February 2023 — would usher in a new chapter for the brand, one that could have only been set in motion by the 13-time Grammy Award winner. Every piece walked the tightrope between pop culture and luxury, and a front row of mononymous A-listers (including Rihanna, Maluma, Zendaya, and Beyoncé) had turned out to show their support.
The show’s score was an original composition by Pharrell, performed by celebrated pianist Lang Lang, and a live orchestra. And there was even more. Pharrell had also called upon the gospel choir Voices of Fire to sing amidst a sea of models and a fleet of golf carts loaded up with oversized Louis Vuitton trunks.
“If you appreciate Louis Vuitton, you’re a lover of the curation. You love the product but, deeper than that, it’s a love for the culture that embodies a like-mindedness of taste.”
Pharrell Williams
The whole production was steeped in elegance and extravagance, juxtaposing contemporary themes and bold, modern visuals alongside the brand’s rich heritage. But what made the show truly cohesive was that Pharrell had managed to mirror this spectacle in the designs and garments themselves. Undoubtedly taking notes from his predecessor, the late Virgil Abloh, Pharrell’s SS24 collection introduced streetwear sensibilities to traditional house codes.
“For me, ‘LV’ means ‘LVERS,’ ” explains Pharrell. “If you appreciate Louis Vuitton, you’re a lover of the curation. You love the product but, deeper than that, it’s a love for the culture that embodies a like-mindedness of taste.” As for how that taste manifests in the collection, Pharrell has broken his new looks down into five categories.
“The humans who buy and wear Louis Vuitton have five modes: dandy, which is tailoring for business and events; comfort, which is what you wear at home and to the gas station; resort, for when you’re on the beach; sport, for activity and working out; and finally, the core staples of the house, which I’m going to iterate on every season. It’s thinking across the board of the demographic. Everything you want to do, we made something for you.”
In Paris, these “modes” were presented with pixelated camouflage suits dubbed “Damoflage” (a riff on Louis Vuitton’s iconic checkerboard “Damier” print that has swiftly become a Pharrell signature), cropped suit jackets paired with loose shorts and cowboy boots, and checkered red and black trench coats. Add rugby shirts, light-wash denim getups, and a wide selection of berets, and Pharrell has served up menswear, reimagined.
In many ways, pieces like the label’s neon monogrammed coats signal a sharp pivot away from what we’ve traditionally come to expect from a high-end fashion house. Nonetheless, as a student of design, Pharrell clearly understands that some staples are requisite, with the brand’s iconic “Speedy” bag sitting at the top of that list. As such, the artist has refreshed the design with elements of streetwear, constructing it with the classic “Monogram” leather and traditional “Damier” canvas, but introducing primary colours as a sly comment on Canal Street counterfeits.
“I wanted to take something I felt would be unisex and just make a great bag for humans. It is an everyday icon conceived for every walk of life.”
Pharrell Williams
“The Speedy was always a men’s canvas bag until they made a smaller version for Audrey Hepburn in 1965,” says Pharrell. “I wanted to take something I felt would be unisex and just make a great bag for humans. It is an everyday icon conceived for every walk of life.”
As for the Canal Street nod, Pharrell’s goal was to introduce more contemporary, subversive elements to the historical icon.
“It’s flipping it on its head,” he explains. “I want to come in on a bag level and make a splash. Primary colours are where you start. Then you see the bag has wrinkles in it and that it’s droopy, and you know instantly that it’s not a regular Speedy. That’s not canvas. It’s butter-soft leather.”
This subversiveness is sewn through the whole collection. While the artist’s reverence for Louis Vuitton is clear — this isn’t merely a hobby for Pharrell, he uprooted his life in Miami and took up permanent residence in Paris last year — the beauty of his appointment is that only someone with the 50-year-old’s levels of conviction and courage could possibly reimagine a legacy label’s most renowned elements and succeed. But, while the Speedy made a colourful splash in Paris, it’s the aforementioned Damoflage that seems to excite Pharrell the most. He even wore the pattern on his own suit during the Fashion Week show.
“I came into this knowing that I wanted to make some serious, indelible marks.”
Pharrell Williams
“I came into this knowing that I wanted to make some serious indelible marks,” says Pharrell. “The first of which was: I know the Monogram is historically a very dominant force within the house. I had the Bastille bag in Damier, I had shoes and boots in Damier. I saw it as an opportunity. The fact that it has the chessboard set-up, we could use the grid as a platform to play with different artistic techniques. The first was to treat the blocks like 8-bit Atari graphics. I worked with E.T. Artist, who’s really good at it. The super powerful one is the Damoflage, which fuses Damier and camo. I wanted to make a print that makes people say, ‘Okay, that’s P. And that’s Damier.’”
Pharrell’s Parisian debut for the brand, while undoubtedly spectacular, was more than just the sum of its A-list, musical, and opulently architectural parts. It was also an introduction to the artist’s intentions and design philosophies. As creative director, he will honour the legacy of Louis Vuitton, while integrating its luxury status and reputation into contemporary pop culture. Virgil Abloh drew the blueprint for this approach during his lauded tenure, and now Pharrell is making it his own — in suitably sophisticated, Damoflage-patterned style.
