Pharrell Williams poses on the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles earlier this month.
Robin Beck/AFP through Getty Photos
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Robin Beck/AFP through Getty Photos
Pharrell Williams poses on the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles earlier this month.
Robin Beck/AFP through Getty Photos
Singer-songwriter, rapper, producer, designer and philanthropist Pharrell Williams is including one other place to his roster: Louis Vuitton menswear inventive director.
The luxurious home introduced Tuesday that Williams will take the place of famend designer Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton’s first black inventive director, who died of most cancers in November 2021 on the age of 41.
Williams’ first assortment might be offered in June at Males’s Vogue Week in Paris. However he’s not new to the model.
“I’m delighted to welcome Farrell residence after our collaboration with Louis Vuitton in 2004 and 2008 as our new Menswear Inventive Director,” stated Louis Vuitton Chairman and CEO Pietro Beccari. “His inventive imaginative and prescient past style will certainly lead Louis Vuitton to a brand new and really thrilling chapter.”
The 13-time Grammy winner and two-time Oscar nominee has years of expertise working with luxurious manufacturers, in line with The Related Press and The New York Occasions.
Within the early 2000s, Williams collaborated with LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) on sun shades and jewellery. The Millionaire sun shades assortment stays so in style that resale websites promote shades for greater than double their authentic worth, and Williams’ pal Abloh re-released the road in 2018.
As well as, Williams had a well-liked sneaker collaboration with Chanel in 2017 (by which he grew to become the primary male to seem in a Chanel advert) and a unisex clothes assortment with Karl Lagerfeld in 2019. He has additionally labored with Moncler, Adidas Originals and Tiffany & Firm.
And he additionally launched his personal manufacturers.
Williams co-founded the influential streetwear label Billionaire Boys Membership in 2003 (together with Japanese designer Nigo, who’s now inventive director of Kenzo, additionally owned by LVMH). Throughout the pandemic, he helped create a transportable cutlery set in hopes of limiting using single-use plastic in an out of doors eating space. And he additionally launched Humanrace, a skincare and wellness firm.
“Pharrell Williams is a visionary whose inventive universes increase from music to artwork to style and has established himself as a world cultural icon over the previous twenty years,” Louis Vuitton stated, including that he reinforces the corporate’s values of “innovation, pioneering spirit”. and entrepreneurship”.
The type icon has massive sneakers to fill
Williams fills a place that has been vacant since Abloh’s loss of life.
Abloh rose to prominence because the inventive director of the rapper previously generally known as Kanye West and based excessive streetwear label Off-White earlier than becoming a member of Louis Vuitton in 2018.
He has grown from “designer” to “curator,” in line with the AP, increasing his pursuits into issues like homewares, jewellery and structure. He himself broke boundaries as one of many few black designers to guide a luxurious style home and labored to pave the way in which for others to come back after him.
“He reinvented the position of inventive director, bringing to it hip-hop’s penchant for remixes, skateboarding’s sense of neighborhood, and a drive for social progress,” writes Enterprise of Vogue. “And he has helped open doorways to a wider vary of creatives by interacting immediately along with his followers on-line and offline and providing them ‘cheat codes’ and ‘data footprints’ on how one can launch their very own manufacturers.”
Whereas many individuals, together with well-known celebrities, greeted the information of Williams’ appointment on social media, some had been confused and even criticized the choice to interchange him with a star quite than a youthful, formally educated designer.
“All that Virgil stood for [was] to open doorways,” wrote one person. “This can be a unusual assembly.”
For some, Williams’ most recognizable style second might have been the chunky hat he wore to the 2014 Grammy Awards or, extra lately, his controversial diamond-studded teardrop-shaped Tiffany sun shades.
However GQ notes that he has been a method icon all through his profession, from pairing skateboarding with hip-hop type as a frontman for NERD within the early 2000s to utilizing womenswear and gender-neutral clothes lately.
It began with “I can do it,” Williams instructed the journal in 2019 when he posed on the quilt of The New Manhood in a full costume.
“Whenever you take heed to your self and really feel comfy with who you’re, you put on what you suppose matches and appears on you,” he added. “That is all.”
