Runway debuts don't get much bigger than Pharrell's first Louis Vuitton collection.
If you expected mere spectacle, you underestimated Pharrell: the LV artistic director took over Paris' historic Pont Neuf bridge with a backup band, gospel choir, and a veritable army of of models draped in Pharrell's new LV menswear designs.
Pharrell's Louis Vuitton show wasn't just a blow-out event, it was an almost unfair beginning to a fairly stacked Fashion Week. How can the other luxury labels scheduled to present in the following days ever hope to compare?
That's kinda the point, though: Pharrell's LV is destined to be a series of explosive headline grabs, where the you-gotta-see-this factor outweighs all else. That ain't a diss, by the way.
Chew on this: though Pharrell's new Louis Vuitton clothes were ostensibly the runway's main event, they're almost predisposed to play second fiddle to the sheer display of star power.
That is to say, Beyoncé, JAY-Z, Rihanna, A$AP Rocky, Lewis Hamilton, and Takashi Murakami all sat front row while Pharrell's musical peers, ranging from Dave to a reunited Clipse (Pusha T and Malice), strode the makeshift runway.
If you can get past the fact that Queen Bey actually deigned to attend a runway show for the first time in years, you've still got some mighty cool clothes on hand.
Pharrell's Louis Vuitton debut is packed with thoughtful references to his own legacy, wild statement pieces, ingenious new handbags (a leather Louis Vuitton shopper?!), and some crazy footwear that's destined to be the stuff of red carpet legend.
The 100 or so LV looks mostly focus on tailoring, with clothes cut relatively trim — in comparison to the hugely baggy Louis Vuitton looks of yesteryear — and occasionally accented by crystals or studs.
But any emphasis on formality was undercut by boxy leather car coats, blazers cropped to waist-length, and military-inspired overcoats that recall ghillie suits with their cut-out detailing, drenched in Pharrell's new "Damoflauge" (Damier pattern camouflage).
Brilliant colors, which appeared throughout the Louis Vuitton SS24 runway, are laden with meaning: in a statement, Pharrell cites the "hustle" of Canal Street bootleggers as the inspiration for his color-drenched LV Keepalls and Trunks. Elsewhere, Pharrell references the "healing" powers of copper when describing his new, metallic bronze-tinged cases.
"The Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2024 Men’s Collection orbits the sun as a focal point for opportunity, responsibility, and enhancement," LV said in a statement.
Important snippets from Pharrell's SS24 press release: "The memory of Princess Anne High School is epitomised in savoir-faire takes on the varsity jacket. ... Damoflage splices the heritage Damier pattern of Louis Vuitton with camouflage in a reflection of two domains of style, paying tribute to friends in Paris. ... A desire for comfort is captured in magnified shearling slippers in Monogram intarsia, their outsole embossed with a bear’s footprint, created to leave an impression. ... Made for focus, sunglasses with caps crafted in the image of camera lenses invite the wearer to see the world through primary colour-tinted glasses. ... A new adaptation of the Louis Vuitton Speedy bag conjures the attitude and hustle mentality of Canal Street in an everyday icon conceived for every walk of life."
It's worth stepping back and considering the context to get a bird's-eye view of Pharrell's whole thing.
Pharrell's first Louis Vuitton collection is a mission statement for the future and several surrounding context clues — some not even directly related to the show itself — give us an idea of what to expect from the future of Pharrell's LV.
To start, the new Louis Vuitton menswear collection was foretold by (who else?) Pharrell himself, who's been wearing his new LV leather jacket and puffy sneakers for months now.
Covered in LV's logo monogram, each leather double rider's jacket is custom-made, hand-studded with slogans like "PUPIL LV KING" and the name of its famous owner (Pharrell, JAY-Z, so on).
Pharrell's Louis Vuitton jackets are flex-worthy luxury artifacts destined to fetch five figures at future auctions but, more importantly, they're signifiers for members of Pharrell's stylish, influential collective.
In the same way that the International Stüssy Tribe jackets once reflected membership into an IYKYK club of movers and shakers, Pharrell's new Louis Vuitton jackets are a similar handshake, though too ostentatious to be secret.
Subtlety isn't the point though. Pharrell's LV is being positioned as the hot new club in town: everyone wants in, a few people are let past the velvet ropes, and even fewer are allowed up to where the (many) VIPs are partying.
But there is one LV-approved way in that's open to anyone. Prior to the runway show, we received a peek into Pharrell's process by way of his new @skateboard Instagram account, which documents behind-the-scenes moments at the Louis Vuitton atelier.
The vibe is very reminiscent of the many Virgil Abloh-obsessed "archival" Instagram pages that've dominated the digital streetwear conversation in Abloh's wake. HIDDEN.NY was, for a while, the most visible example.
And, sure enough, @skateboard's raw shots of Pharrell and his team hard at work were immediately reposted by various third-party IG accounts seeking clicks and clout, proof that whatever this account lacks in prescience, it makes up for in visibility.
It doesn't hurt that the inaugural images showed Pharrell wearing that frequently misinterpreted CPFM "Ye" hoodie, a certified archival IG page classic.
Regardless of memetic potential, @skateboard's true appeal is insight into key elements of Pharrell's LV: a bright gold skateboard (playful and precious), text chains of Pharrell mid-ideation (very Virgil Abloh), and a cropped screengrab of a Keizo Kitajima photograph.
Clearly, the idea behind @skateboard is to allow Pharrell admirers to live vicariously through his studio, tapping into the off-the-cuff of popular digital moodboards across Instagram and Twitter.
It's worth harping on these points because they tell us nearly as much about the future of Pharrell's Louis Vuitton as the actual SS24 menswear collection.
The collection is really just one piece in the bigger puzzle that is Pharrell's Louis Vuitton. Put it all together and observe the big picture.
Consider, for instance, how Louis Vuitton is tapping Pharrell's star power to bring big names like Rihanna into its fold, taking an XXL approach to the bring-your-friends mentality of Virgil Abloh's LV.
Notice how @skateboard is cutting out the middleman and directly serving snackable material to the zeitgeist-obsessed social media crowd.
Think about how Pharrell first official move as LV artistic director was to create graphic T-shirts that twisted the motto of Virginia, Pharrell's home state, "Virginia is for lovers," into a new (and extremely commercial) "LoVers" motif.
This multifaceted, semi-tangible approach is the true intent behind Pharrell's Louis Vuitton. It was never just about clothes.
Let's face it: Louis Vuitton will be successful regardless of its creative director. As one of the world's pre-eminent fashion houses, LV boasts a world-class creative team and enough name-brand recognition to coast forever on handbag and wallet sales alone.
LV even broke revenue records in 2022, the interim year when it didn't have an artistic or creative director on the men's side (Nicolas Ghesquière remains head of LV women's).
Point being, Pharrell's job is not to design clothes. The stuff he helped create for Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2024 collection is thoughtfully designed and immaculately presented, yes but the purpose behind Pharrell's Louis Vuitton appointment is to make his house more relevant and, thus, more profitable.
To that end, Pharrell is perhaps better suited than any of his peers to make the already huge LV even huger, nice clothes or not.
The SS24 LV clothes were pretty nice, though.
