Pharrell Williams joins Louis Vuitton – and why this is just the beginning. The current style column by Jan Kedves.
This June, Pharrell Williams will make his debut as creative director of Louis Vuitton’s men’s line in Paris. A win for fashion, a loss for pop? more complicated. For one thing, Pharrell, who deserves eternal thanks for hits like “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” won’t stop making music. On the other hand, his vision for the luxury house will be a symbolic gain for the fashion industry, even if the trade press finds it rather meager. Because the parent company LVMH, led by Bernard Arnault, the richest person in the world, has filled the vacancy created by Virgil Abloh’s tragically early death with a person of color.
Abloh (1980-2021) was the first black person to head a really big luxury brand, he was revered as a genius. If a white person had followed him, it would have been seen as a step backwards for the fashion industry, which for so long excluded people of color from responsible jobs. Ok, Martine Rose would have been a good option, but good luck Pharrell!
A lot is happening on the floors below: Olivier Rousteing, the designer from Balmain, has – inspired by her song line “It should cost a billion to look this good” – designed the glamorously glittering “Renaissance Couture” collection together with Beyoncé. And the 27-year-old Maximilian Davis, who became the new creative director of the luxury house Ferragamo in 2022 and has roots in Trinidad and Jamaica, was able to convince the critics with his first collections, worn by Kelela and Naomi Campbell.
“The more you want it, the lower the price”
The panorama is only completed by Telfar Clemens. The New Yorker is not an employee of a luxury conglomerate, family clan (Ferragamo) or investment fund from Qatar (Balmain), but head of his own black-owned business. He’s proud of that and it gives him the freedom to do whatever he wants with his Telfar brand, whose bags continue to be the hype around the world. Most recently, he turned the fashion industry’s logic of exclusivity and price upside down when he let his customers decide how expensive the hoodies, jersey robes and tank tops in his “Telfar Live” collection should be.
They hit the online store wholesale and then went up in price every second until they sold out (usually priced between $100 and $200). “The more you want it, the lower the price” is the ingenious motto. A sale in reverse gear: Pharrell would have to make such a suggestion at Louis Vuitton – he would probably soon be out of his job again.
This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 06/2023.