Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton Runway Shows Just Keep Getting Bigger
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How do you sum up a fashion show that seeks to represent the entire world? Pharrell Williams gave it a shot following yet another supernova spectacle for Louis Vuitton Men’s, held on the grounds of the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. “It was an homage,” he said, “to human beings.”
Cue slightly nervous laughter, from the small press gaggle and from the LV creative director himself. Pharrell knows how to go big in all aspects of his life and work, but this was a message so hugely universal that you couldn’t help but find it daunting.
Still, if anyone can pull off fashion’s “We Are the World” moment, it’s Pharrell. The production began in typical Louis Vuitton fashion, with a pre-show hangout among Pharrell’s rainbow coalition of famous friends and collaborators. Under the flags of all nations, Central Cee and Sabrina Carpenter made small talk while Colman Domingo and Michael Fassbender posed for photos in their new LV duds. All 7-foot-4 of Victor Wembanyana loomed over the proceedings, like Atlas next to a steel sculpture of the globe.
As the sun poked through a curtain of rain clouds, it soon became apparent how Pharrell had organized his homage: in a spectrum of skin tones paired with matching monochrome clothing. “From black to dark brown to brown to light brown to beige, a little bit of gray in there. Then we got to light beige, and then finally to white,” said Pharrell of the lineup. “I don’t know if you guys saw that,” he added.
It was hard to miss. The opening suit was cut in the darkest of formal velvet, while look 66 was a milky silk topcoat. In between, Pharrell’s vision of high-flying luxury whizzed by in a multicultural gradient. Backstage, Pharrell said he had been thinking of the impending Olympics, the preparations for which have already brought parts of Paris to a standstill in advance of next month’s opening ceremony.
“If you're the fastest person in this Olympics, then you're the fastest person for the next four years. But unless there's humans out in the solar system, you're pretty much the fastest person in the solar system,” Pharrell ruminated. The show was his tribute to human excellence and connection: “How can we show the world how appreciative we are, and show the world how beautiful we are as a species, from the blackest of the black to the whitest of the white?”
This being a Pharrell production, there was a full orchestra wearing custom LV suits, and the Voices of Fire gospel choir were decked out in Damier check frocks to belt the cinematic Pharrell-composed soundtrack “Triumphus Cosmos.” Carpenter’s entrance fueled momentary speculation that she and Pharrell would debut a song together during the show, as the hitmaker did with Mumford & Sons in January and Swae Lee and Rauw Alejandro at his pre-fall outing in Hong Kong. Instead, that honor went to Clipse brothers Pusha T and Malice, whose John Legend-featuring heater “Birds Don’t Sing” rang out through the UNESCO gardens midway into the program.
Pharrell continues to take the men’s fashion show to new levels of ambition and expense. No detail was spared the LV touch. The 800-some guests were summoned with Apple AirTags nestled in a custom LV metal case; the grassy runway was painted with the brand’s check pattern; LV employees wore custom denim uniforms printed with the rallying cry Le Monde Est À Vous; UNESCO employees who opened their office windows to get a better view were swiftly corrected, lest they disturb the livestream tableau.
It’s easy to forget that Pharrell is still new to this job. But unless there’s another Louis Vuitton out there in the solar system, Pharrell currently holds the gold medal in the spectator sport of aspirational new luxury. The collection was the latest of Pharrell’s evolving travelogue narratives. His debut brought LV savoir-faire from Paris to VA, and on Tuesday, the world flew to Paris. The looks were organized around different manifestations of what Louis Vuitton called “global dandies,” with diplomats in strict formalwear and pilots donning cropped blazers and flight jackets in various gleaming leathers. A smattering of secret agents went incognito in fine tailoring and undercover in muscular zip-ups. The leisure traveler wore a delicately monogrammed velvet sweatsuit, a workwear shirt covered in a pixelated reptilian print Pharrell calls “snake-o-flage,” and a smart safari jacket.
Pharrell’s work is lavishly detailed with jewels and micro monograms and completely custom hardware that changes season to season, but the silhouettes were concise and controlled, even stately. You could imagine any of the globetrotting VIPs in the audience changing into a camel overcoat or satin-y dressing gown before deplaning for a high-level summit (or at least an awards show). But what would they pack it in? A new line of monogram luggage rendered entirely in leather (rather than the traditional canvas). Like Pharrell’s smash-hit Speedy, the bags are soft and pliable; one model squished his rectangular mini-trunk in the crook of his arm. I was told that Pharrell had already placed a personal order for a novelty tote woven out of black-and-white pearls.
Following the skin tone segment, the final 15 looks represented a global celebration. A jacket was made out of the leather cuts that would wrap the world’s most expensive soccer ball, in a nod to the ultimate global sport. Blue-and-green-check suits were made with Paris-based collective Air Afrique, who launched in 2020 to provide a platform for artists and creatives throughout the African diaspora. From their front row seats, the debonair Air Afrique crew of Jeremy Konko, Lamine Diaoune, Djiby Kebe, and Ahmadou-Bamba Thiam practically collapsed into each other’s arms as their collaboration hit the runway, and then collapsed again when Pharrell hit them with a salute on his triumphant bow. “It’s like a dream,” Diaoune told me of the partnership. Finally, an explosion of multicolored Damier checks sealed the closing ceremony of Pharrell’s Olympic games.
Pharrell’s grandest statement yet clearly landed with the people of Earth. As the VIPs made their way to Pharrell for a requisite photo op, Wemby, a newly-minted French Olympic team member, leaned down to deliver his review: “Incredible,” he said. “Incredible.”
Originally Appeared on GQ
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