Pharrell Fashion Week

Louis Vuitton's new Artistic Director is who we need now

The actor, Olly Sholotan (Bel Air), was in our Paris showroom. It was his first Fashion Week and of all the observations, his sole complaint was that “Fashion people don’t know how to keep time!” So funny. The shows start 45 minutes late and then you’re scrambling to the next presentation because Ubers are backed up in Paris gridlock. Buyers are notoriously behind on appointments, loosely holding onto fluid schedules that can turn on the drop of a hat (or sneaker). Even the flights out of Charles de Gaulle airport are delayed. Mine was stuck for 5 hours. Cojo told me that their plane had already taken off when the hydraulics gave out. The plane returned to Paris and the passengers were stranded another day.

For being such a capricious, trend-driven industry, fashion can move at a glacial pace. Everything happens slowly, then suddenly, but in hindsight, the movements are incremental. It’s been three and a half years since Virgil Abloh declared streetwear as dead. A little over two years after that, he himself had exited quietly. Just now are we feeling the ramifications of these shifts across fashion. Many of the runway trends have already transitioned to suiting and dresses. Supreme is down, Nike is cramping. 2023 feels a lot different than the DTC+sweats run in the pandemic and a distant galaxy from the peak of streetwear hype: LV X Supreme (2017).

When Louis Vuitton announced that Pharrell would be picking up where Virgil left off, taking the helm as Men’s Creative Director, everybody spilled their opinions. It didn’t necessarily make anyone happy, but it didn’t make anybody mad. It was a logical choice: “safe” for the culture and “smart” to the business minded. But I liked it because Pharrell had something to prove. Pharrell Williams, the Virginia Beach native who was fresh and captivating as a young producer. In an era of yachts and blazers, Pharrell was dipping in a BMX bike with a trucker cap and a handlebar moustache. He was automatically, categorically cool. Pharrell Williams, who put his fingerprint on both hip-hop and skateboarding in the early 2000s and wrapped a streetwear bow around them. And Pharrell Williams, who created the biggest pop song of our generation (“Happy”) while judging on a mainstream music competition series and founding multiple companies.

Pharrell Williams was now out of his comfort zone. The judge being judged. Of course, P has been involved in fashion. He’s collaborated with Louis Vuitton in 2004 and 2008. He’s filled big hats. But now he had big shoes to fill.

Many, many years ago, I met with Pharrell in his studio…