Louis Vuitton’s FW25 Collection Offers a Piece of Pharrell… and Nigo

The word on the street is that menswear is in a bit of a weird moment, without any singularly dominant trend, the kind of which we’ve seen in recent times. Perhaps Pharrell agrees with that school of thought, because Louis Vuitton’s Fall-Winter 2025 collection, designed with longtime collaborator and Kenzo Men’s Creative Director, Nigo, is all about what has been, rather than what’s on the horizon. 

Inside a Damier, mirrored showspace in the Cour Carée of the Louvre, Pharrell — and Nigo! — showed a collection that riffed on their collective archive. Pharrell and Nigo’s collaborative history goes back to the early aughts, when they worked together to create Billionaire Boys Club, as well as the Louis Vuitton Millionaires 1.0 sunglasses, in 2004. They are intimately familiar with one another’s work and, together, they helped shape the face of higher end streetwear through the late 2000s and into the 2010s. 

Louis Vuitton’s FW25 Collection Offers a Piece of Pharrell… and Nigo

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It came as no surprise, then, that the clothes were steeped in the aesthetic they helped popularize. It seemed, early and often, that these were pieces that Pharrell and Nigo would want to wear or had worn in the past. There were plenty of caps in the style of those sported by the Japanese designer, there were Nike Cortez-like shoes, a monogrammed baseball jersey with Japanese lettering that either Pharrell or Nigo could have worn in the mid-2000s, workwear softened with sakura motifs, plenty of pink (a reference, one assumes, to Japanese landscapes during cherry blossom season) and new, intricate takes on camouflage. 

Fashion show set at the Louis Vuitton FW25 show for Paris Men's Fashion Week

But largely, this wasn’t about the clothes. Speaking to the rise of celebrity designers — both those who became famous because of their designs and those who turned to design when they were already famous — this collection felt like it was more about proximity to Pharrell and Nigo. At the close of the show, large display cases revealed an archive of pieces, curated by contemporary auctioneer Joopiter, that told the tale of Pharrell and Nigo’s journey to this point. There’s an assortment of their past work, but also older Louis Vuitton pieces that resonated with them. The archive might also be viewed as the reference point for the collection — the pieces that shaped Pharrell and Nigo. 

In the world of collectibles, be it art, watches or books, proximity is worth a premium. A signed first edition is worth more, even if it isn’t made out to you. Houses where a famous artist lived fetch more on the market. Of two lithographs, the one the artist numbered or signed by hand will be more sought after. Here, in Paris, cafés and bistros like Café de Flore or Les Deux Magots are famous not necessarily for their food, but for who has eaten there over the decades. We sit at the tables because Hemingway, too, sat at them.

In the case of the Louis Vuitton collection, the proximity comes not only in the form of the lore — that these pieces are inspired by Pharrell and Nigo’s lived history — but also in the form of Pharrell and Nigo’s faces, emblazoned on bags and other accessories, and the latter’s handwriting (in both French and Japanese) used on bags. Then, there’s the fact that Joopiter allows people to buy the pieces from Pharrell and Nigo’s closet. One can choose from varying degrees of proximity to the duo.

Louis Vuitton has, perhaps more than any other brand, understood that we might be living in a post-trend world (at least in menswear). Rather than fashion an entire collection around, say, a shift to tailoring or prepwear, the Fall-Winter 2025 collection rests on the shoulders of Pharrell and Nigo, and intangibles like the friendship between the two and the aura that each emanates. 

Louis Vuitton’s FW25 Collection Offers a Piece of Pharrell… and Nigo

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If proximity to greatness is what we’re after — and what this collection offers — Pharrell seems to have figured it out. Until quite recently, Nigo was a relatively niche figure. I have crossed paths with him in Paris, outside shows, before he was at Kenzo, and been the only person to recognize him. Pharrell, on the other hand, is one of the most famous people on the planet. And yet, when they’ve worked together in the past, it seems as if Pharrell is in awe of Nigo. While I’m sure it’s a mutual feeling, there was something touching about seeing the two emerge for a bow, Pharrell with his arm draped around Nigo.

Now that’s proximity.