Fashion & Design

Happy:
Louis Vuitton and Pharrell Williams

Louis Vuitton first conquered the world with stylish and practical travel trunks before growing into a luxury fashion empire. Last year, the company appointed Pharrell Williams as creative director of its men’s line. Which brings us to the topic of surprises.

  • Text
    Wiebke Brauer
  • Fotos
    Louis Vuitton

Few people saw this coming. Pharrell Williams as creative director of the men’s line of luxury fashion brand Louis Vuitton? The singer and record producer from Virginia Beach, who probably can’t even sew on a button by himself? This same Pharrell Williams is now supposed to take the reins at one of the most successful and legendary French fashion houses? Stunned looks all around. Okay, so he was the creative genius behind the smash hit “Happy”, performed vocals on the Daft Punk song “Get Lucky”, wrote and produced “Hot in Here” for Nelly and “Blurred Lines” for Robin Thicke. But fashion? The second surprise was that the fifty-year-old’s appointment turned out not to be as surprising as it first appeared. At second glance, it was all totally logical. Firstly, because of his predecessor Virgil Abloh, who we will come to in a moment. And secondly due to the fact that Pharrell Williams knows what he’s selling. He understands style. And he always strikes the right note – which you are welcome to understand in both musical as well as fashion terms.

Prelude: Virgil Abloh. Abloh wasn’t a European menswear designer either, but American, the son of Ghanaian immigrants, a civil engineer and architect by training. From 2018 until his untimely death in 2021, he was the first Black man to shape the menswear line at Louis Vuitton and in his short creative period turned the classic rules of fashion upside down. Abloh not only brought street style to the catwalk, but also the art of curating. His designs for the French luxury fashion house consisted of surprising rearrangements of the familiar, with references and cross-references. People have attributed this same way of working to Karl Lagerfeld, but Abloh added something else to the mix: a modern coolness.
“I’m not a fashion designer. I’m a creative director.”
Pharrell Williams in Vogue

Though we should say that not everyone loved Abloh’s low-effort approach. One of his “innovations”, for example, was to simply chrome-plate Dieter Rams’s music system for Braun. That was it for creativity. In an interview with The New Yorker, Abloh once explained his design standards with the “three-percent rule”. In his opinion, it was enough to make minimal changes to an existing product to create a new design. “You don’t have to be a designer to be a designer,” he once said during a talk at Columbia University. Knowing that he used to DJ in his spare time helps to understand how Abloh saw design: as a remix.

And Pharrell Williams? In an interview recently with Vogue, he said, “I’m not a fashion designer. I’m a creative director.” Though it helps to know that he was already wearing pearl necklaces, nail polish and hats by Vivian Westwood when Harry Styles was still in grade school. That giant brown hat he wore at the Grammys? That was in 2014, when Styles was just ten years old. Actually, Williams has worked together with fashion companies from the very beginning: with Moncler for a down jacket, with Adidas for a pair of sneakers, with G-Star for a sustainable jeans collection, with Comme des Garçons for a fragrance – and, of course, with Louis Vuitton. Their first collaboration was in 2004, when Pharrell Williams met Marc Jacobs at the opening of the Manhattan store. Jacobs was artistic director of the French luxury label from 1997 to 2013, creating the fashion collections for men and women during this time. He complimented Williams on his sunglasses. They had been designed by his friend Nigō, founder of the streetwear brand A Bathing Ape – and of course a musician and DJ in his own right. What no one could have known at the time: in 2021 Nigō would become artistic director of luxury fashion house Kenzo.

“My life is a collaboration. And my gift is to collaborate. Because while this is a place where I can contribute ideas and my vision, I’m here with people who are far more talented than me.”
Pharrell Williams in Vogue

In any case, the compliment from Marc Jacobs led to Williams and Nigō working together on a sunglasses collection for Vuitton. And to make things a little more complicated: Nigō and Williams’s Millionaire model was later reinterpreted by Virgil Abloh and resurfaced in Pharrell Williams’s first collection for Louis Vuitton. And because Williams worked for the luxury company twice more in the following years, it can be assumed that they knew exactly who they were bringing in. Pietro Beccari, CEO of Louis Vuitton, recently had this to say about his new creative director: “Whatever Pharrell touches becomes gold.”

Let’s take this precious metal as an excuse to briefly talk about the subject of luxury. As a kind of intermezzo, if you like. It’s not as if big luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton or Moët & Chandon only came into being because of ( … )

→ Read the full article in rampstyle #31.

Wiebke Brauer

Wiebke Brauer

Head of text ramp & Freelance author
After graduating from high school, Wiebke Brauer studied English and German as her first major with a focus on media culture. Interested in topics of all kinds and bird-free since 2016, as she says herself. With work for Spiegel Online, auto, motor und sport, Motor Klassik, Fuel and Stern, long a blog for the young and classic car site carsablanca.de - and more than fond of ramp magazine.
rampstyle #31 Sieh mal einer an!

rampstyle #31 Sieh mal einer an!

Sich auf das Wesentliche konzentrieren, alles andere ausblenden. Wer fokussiert unterwegs ist, beherrscht schon mal eine Schlüsselfähigkeit. Aufmerksamkeit begegnet uns in unserer multimodalen Welt ja dummerweise als eine eher beschränkte Ressource. Der Informatikprofessor Cal Newport nennt die Fähigkeit, konzentriert zu agieren, sogar eine »Supermacht des 21. Jahrhunderts«. In besonders guten Momenten vergessen wir die Zeit. Tunnelblick- oder Gewöhnungseffekte? Weit weg. Überraschungen? Willkommen!

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