Happy:
Louis Vuitton and Pharrell Williams

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.

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.

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 ( … )

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