Only Pharrell Could Bring NIGO Back to Louis Vuitton. Will He?
Virgil Abloh's Louis Vuitton x NIGO collaborations were of such import to the late designer that their second outing was one of Abloh's final major initiatives for the fashion house. So, it follows that Pharrell Williams would reunite NIGO with LV, not just because they're pals but because they'd be building atop an existing luxury legacy.
Well, not so fast.
Rumors that began circulating on social media in early 2025 posited that Pharrell and NIGO would be partnering on a Louis Vuitton collaboration later that very year.
Tantalizing stuff, so much so that it sure seems like a slam dunk. On paper, at least.
Here you have two famously close fellas who're often coming together on endeavors as disparate as music, three-way adidas sneakers, and NIGO's HUMAN MADE brand, where Pharrell joined the payroll of its parent company as an "advisor."
Of course Pharrell would be the man to kick off another NIGO x Louis Vuitton collaboration! With both men so deeply entrenched in the LVMH machine (NIGO is the artistic director of KENZO), how could he not?
There is, however, no reason to get excited. Yet.
A Louis Vuitton representative said, when asked by Highsnobiety to confirm or deny NIGO's rumored Louis Vuitton collection, that they currently had "no information" on the news.
That's not a no, obviously, but it's also not a definitive yes.
But the precedent nevertheless remains.
Virgil Abloh masterminded two LV² collections with NIGO in 2020 and 2022, each of which were remarkably expansive and quite popular.
The first collaboration was important for too many reasons to list here — a high-profile acknowledgment of streetwear heritage, NIGO's first proper luxury team-up, Abloh's first standalone LV menswear capsule created with a well-known third-party, and so on — but it also reflected a sort of torch-passing moment.
Abloh's NIGO x LV partnership mirrored the fragment design x LV menswear collab masterminded by previous creative director Kim Jones several seasons prior. Each person involved with the latter was a mentor to one of the men in the subsequent offering, with Abloh succeeding Jones and NIGO schooled in his craft by fragment design's Hiroshi Fujiwara.
As such, the LV² collections transcended pure product — they were about weaving together cultural threads, an evolution of taste and influence.
Pharrell is similarly conscious of that sort of power, having achieved something similar by inviting Tyler, the Creator to devise an LV collection. No one else but him could bring NIGO back to LV and make the resulting collection anywhere as meaningful as the first outing. The question is, will he?
