Rapper-producer Pharrell presented his debut Louis Vuitton collection at Paris Men’s Fashion Week on Tuesday night. There were super celebrities, the gilded Point Neuf bridge and a logo for once.
Fashion is not a button shop, at least for Europe: in April, the market value of the LVMH luxury group became the first European company ever to exceed 500 billion dollars (455 billion euros).
All the expectations, resources and cultural clout involved in this issue were put on the line in Paris at Men’s Fashion Week on Tuesday night. One of the group’s flagships, Louis Vuitton, introduced its new men’s line as its creative director by Pharrell Williams the first collection.
50-year-old Pharrell Williams has greatly influenced today’s music and fashion. The visionary made known to the general public by the radio hit “Happy” has previously designed clothes for Billionaire Boys Club and Adidas, among others.
Pharrell and Vuitton put everything on the line: The show presenting the spring and summer 2024 collection was organized on the Point Neuf bridge covered with gilded tiles. The more than 400-year-old, two-hundred-meter Point Neuf is the oldest of the bridges crossing the Seine in Paris.
Also working for Juha Nurminen was there filming for Getty Images.
– A bigger gear would not have been found again. Can any other company get permission from the city of Paris to close a couple hundred meter bridge and those blocks? This of course caused big traffic jams in the area.
But the stakes were high. The previous leader, tragically died of heart cancer in 2021 Virgil Abloh brought “Luikkari” to the popularity of fashion-conscious youth both in the United States and in China. Pharrell has big boots to fill, especially with new winds blowing in fashion compared to Abloh’s streetwear-inspired 2010s.
The guest list of the fashion show was full of surprises: couples arrived in Paris for the evening Rihanna & A$AP Rocky mixed Beyonce & Jay-ZActors Zendaya and Jared Letoformula driver Lewis Hamiltondecorated with a star LeBron Jamestop model Naomi Campbella social media star Kim Kardashian and, among other things, a rock musician Lenny Kravitz.
– Kardashian’s Kim, Alicia KeyesAmerican basketball players, but also the CEO of French club club LVMH by Bernard Arnault under. Here was a funny contrast between these evening-dressed Frenchmen and rappers, Juha Nurminen tells his observations.
Star power was also found on the catwalk. Among others, the coke-rap legend arriving at Flow Festival and Pharrell’s long-time musician colleague walked as a model Pusha T and his brother, also a musician Well, Malice.
The producer and the rappers have come a long way from Virginia, where they met in high school and made The Neptunes & The Clipse -as a collaboration of classic records that mostly dealt with selling drugs. The momentum from Virginia has been enough until Paris Fashion Week.
The clothes and accessories themselves were already familiar from Abloh’s season with the logo cannon, special materials, loose-fitting mixes of street and high fashion.
Pharrell brought his invention “Damoflage”, i.e. a camouflage-inspired army version of the traditional LV Damier check pattern, with which he created a “pixel-like” effect to the clothes. Pharrell did not offer a more specific explanation for the military, since the theme of the show was love.
According to Juha Nurminen, the camotema divided the audience.
– International opinion is probably very positive. But the French look down on such camo patterns and military-style cuts, not their thing by default.
Nurminen thinks that even though camo is familiar to rappers, for example, the first connotation for many people may be war.
– Which is now constantly on display in Europe anyway.
What did critics think of the show? First reactions vary. The Face magazine wrote the collection puts “questioners’ doubts to sleep”, while The style zeitgeist Eugene Rabkin characterized it on Instagram as a “burning pile of garbage” that should make Paris “give up its high culture”.
AP, Reuters also used as a source