The fashion and entertainment industries, which have long been intertwined, converged even further on Tuesday when Louis Vuitton named Pharrell Williams, the American rapper and producer, as its new creative director for menswear.
The French luxury brand announced on Instagram that it had hired Williams about 16 months after the sudden death of its previous menswear designer, Virgil Abloh, in 2021. Williams, the brand said in a statement, “is a visionary whose creative universes expand from music to art, and to fashion — establishing himself as a cultural global icon.”
Other names floated as successors to Abloh have included British designers Grace Wales Bonner and Martine Rose, as well as American designers Telfar Clemens and Colm Dillane, better known as KidSuper, who last month was announced as Louis Vuitton’s first menswear guest designer, a sign many took to mean that he had been tapped to follow Abloh. But it was ultimately Williams, 49, who landed what is considered one of the most high-profile creative director roles in men’s fashion. His appointment was the first major move by Louis Vuitton’s new chief executive, Pietro Beccari, who joined the brand from Dior last month.
Williams, who was the first male ambassador for Chanel, has worked off and on with Louis Vuitton since 2004. More recently, he entered into a collaboration with jeweller Tiffany & Co. which with Louis Vuitton is part of luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. During the January menswear shows in Paris, Williams was seldom without his pair of diamond-studded Tiffany sunglasses, which he also wore to the Grammys. His first collection for Louis Vuitton will be shown in June at Men’s Fashion Week in Paris.
“I am glad to welcome Pharrell back home, after our collaborations in 2004 and 2008 for Louis Vuitton, as our new men’s artistic director,” Beccari said in the brand’s statement on Instagram. “His creative vision beyond fashion will undoubtedly lead Louis Vuitton toward a new and very exciting chapter.”
Williams’ return to Louis Vuitton is also a return to menswear design. Earlier this century, he created influential streetwear brands like Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream in partnership with Japanese designer Nigo (who is now the artistic director at Kenzo, also owned by LVMH).
Still, Williams’ appointment to the pinnacle of high-end ready-to-wear underscores an apparent trend among luxury goods makers: to put their futures in the hands of multi-hyphenate celebrities, not designers by profession. Other high-profile entertainers to be embraced by luxury fashion in recent years include Rihanna, whose Fenty clothing line in partnership with LVMH shuttered in 2021, and troubled rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, who became a fixture at fashion weeks around the world.
Spectacle is now a given at runway shows: The recent Louis Vuitton menswear event in Paris, for instance, featured astonishingly expensive sets; a front row studded with stars from the worlds of K-pop, Hollywood and hip-hop; and a supercharged performance by Spanish singer Rosalía, who sang from atop a souped-up car.
Louis Vuitton, which was founded in 1854, is the cornerstone of the fortune amassed by LVMH founder and chief executive Bernard Arnault, who was recently ranked the world’s richest person. While menswear constitutes a relatively modest percentage of overall revenue for the brand, it remains a source of optimism as the fastest-growing sector in a luxury goods industry that continues to struggle against headwinds induced by the pandemic and declining markets in both China and Russia. — NYT
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