Ahead of Pharrell Williams' third show with Louis Vuitton tomorrow, we got exclusive quotes from the legend and styled his debut collection in a radiant shoot.
From 2000 to 2008, the hip-hop fashion consortium of Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, JAY-Z, Dame Dash, and The Diplomats had fashion in a headlock. Colorful, oversized, and buttery-soft leather jackets paired with baggy 12oz denim, plus sneakers and accessories to match, flooded the streets like Skittles spilled on a marble floor. This was an era that inspired Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream obsessed consumers – an infatuation that persists to this day.
After Williams was appointed men’s artistic director of Louis Vuitton, in 2023, he debuted an inaugural collection that felt like the perfect luxury revival of the Johnny Nuñez-snapped Getty Images from Williams’ former hip-hop consortium heyday: There were suits encrusted with pearls and crystals, shearling slippers draped in Monogram intarsia, and the revival of that Speedy Bag.
Williams knew he’d created something special. “In moments like this, when you’ve been chosen to do something, the sun is shining on you,” said Williams, following the collection’s debut. “The quintessential question that I ask myself all the time, and ask people I care about, is, ‘Hey, if the sun is shining on you, what would you do with the light?’”
The answer, in Williams’ case, is to share it wherever and however he can. “When the sun shined on me for an opportunity like this, it changed my life across the board. If I’m going to get this appointment, I’m going to use it to do two things: One, to share all my learnings as a perpetual student; and two, to share my love and appreciation. I’m choosing to shine a light back on this city, these people, all my friends here, who have kept me lifted all this time.”
Here at Highsnobiety, we’d been seeing (and thinking about) the pieces from his debut collection for months before we finally got our hands on a few. That’s when we decided to produce our own ode: to Williams and LV, for bringing back the excitement of that former time, and giving us a chance to revel in the refinery of it today, in 2024.
