Louis Vuitton Chairman and CEO Pietro Beccari nodded to Williams’s preceding perform with the brand, expressing in a statement: “I am happy to welcome Pharrell back dwelling … His imaginative eyesight beyond trend will undoubtedly guide Louis Vuitton towards a new and extremely fascinating chapter.” Late Tuesday afternoon, LVMH’s landing page featured a easy black-and-white picture of Williams, carrying a white T-shirt and diamond chain, with the greeting, “Welcome Pharrell!”
As the resourceful director of menswear, Williams will be billed with producing two collections a yr, inclusive of baggage, add-ons and ready-to-use clothing. His to start with collection for the vogue residence will debut in June at Men’s Vogue 7 days in Paris. Williams’s appointment to a primary posture at the world’s most significant luxurious manufacturer also factors to the continued cultural significance of hip-hop, additional cementing its standing as a world-wide driver of manner.
The 49-calendar year-old Virginia native’s part as a cultural tastemaker and influencer is as various as it is extensive. Williams is best acknowledged for his effects on the audio business, the place he served define hip-hop’s seem as a producer, songwriter and frontman of N.E.R.D. Together with his own chart-topping music (2013′s inescapable “Happy”), Williams has collaborated with or manufactured hits for Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z, between scores of other artists.
That lengthy résumé of collaboration extends to the trend globe, in which he has labored with a selection of main brands, among them Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Tiffany, Nike and Adidas. His most very well-identified partnership thus considerably, although, is his function with Japanese designer Nigo, founder of the streetwear organization A Bathing Ape. With each other, they released the Billionaire Boys Club in 2003, a clothing, accessory and way of life brand name aimed at mixing streetwear and luxurious. Its sneakers (introduced under the sub-label ICECREAM) were being specially well-liked amongst youth skateboarders and hip-hop heads in Japan and the United States. (Nigo is now innovative director of LVMH’s Kenzo label.)
Even with his bona fides as a tastemaker, Williams has huge shoes to fill in Abloh’s absence. The to start with Black American to at any time hold a head design and style situation at a European luxurious dwelling, Abloh is credited with infusing a fashionable and, at periods, ironic sensibility into the brand name.
Whilst rooted in the earth of streetwear, Williams’s feeling of design has been lauded for its irreverence and wide vary (who can ignore The Hat?). In 2015, he turned only the second person to gain a CFDA Style Icon award.
“I get my model from just random people, day-to-day persons — like, design is attention-grabbing to me. Daily issues, you know, services uniforms, sports, skateboarding, normcore, grandma sweaters — all of that stuff is attention-grabbing to me,” Williams advised Vogue at the time. He was also an early adopter of the most recent wave of gender-neutral outfits and aesthetics, donning a ballgown puffer on the entrance of GQ’s New Masculinity Situation in 2019.
When requested about his selections to don a purple crocodile Birkin bag or a pastel Céline coat, Williams advised the magazine that model and suit arrived initially: “I favored some thing, and I set it on. Then the philosophy came guiding it.”
