With his first collection for Louis Vuitton, the all-round artist Pharrell Williams, known for his world hit “Happy”, opens the Fashion Week in Paris on Tuesday with the most anticipated fashion show of the year.
As an announcement, he posted a photo online of himself outside the Musée d’Orsay holding a giant poster showing pregnant Rihanna carrying colorful bags bearing the LV logo. “He gave us a taste of his vision,” Pierre Alexandre M’Pelé, editor-in-chief of GQ France, told AFP.
The 50-year-old star with the teenage looks has worked in the past with big brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton, but now has the difficult task of succeeding Virgil Abloh, who died suddenly in November 2021, through the clever connection of luxury and streetwear became the star of millennials.
The inaugural ‘Pharrell’ runway show kicks off ready-to-wear week, traditionally reserved for young creations, and is set to attract a celebrity crowd, starting with the brand’s many muses, including actress Zendaya (‘Dune’, ‘Euphoria “).
A musician, DJ, producer and designer who has worked with both artist Takashi Murakami and rapper Jay-Z, Pharrell Williams is “a pop culture star” with a “cohort of fans of all ages,” summarizes Alexandre Samson, head of the Haute couture and contemporary creation departments at the Palais Galliera, for AFP together. LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, who saw the first drafts of the collection, said it looked “very, very interesting”.
“It’s one of the most anticipated collections of fashion week and a very defining moment in fashion history,” Samson said. He expects something that will be “extremely alluring and joyful, very design oriented and easily recognizable for all”.
“Chameleon”
Pharrell Williams embodies “the plurality, the transversality. He is an extremely talented person. He’s a kind of chameleon, a muse with many other qualities that used to be required of an artistic director,” emphasizes Pascaline Wilhelm, fashion and textiles consultant. His atypical profile and the many celebrities he brings with him add even more importance to men’s fashion week as it almost steals the show from women’s fashion week.
“The evolution of menswear, which took years to find a terrain on which to express itself, is more visible than that of womenswear. The questioning of gender, masculinity and femininity enables her to express herself in a much more creative way without being caricatural,” states Wilhelm.
One of the designers to watch out for and who embodies these values is Turkish-born Frenchman Burc Akyol, who launched his eponymous brand into the official program in 2018. The graduate of the French Institute of Fashion, who studied under John Galliano at Dior and Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga, has seduced Cate Blanchett and Cardi B with his sensual elegance for men and women. His runway show is Tuesday, ahead of Pharrell Williams’.
Saint Laurent and Celine are the two big absentees this fashion week. With the exception of the last men’s fashion week, when the runway show was held in Paris, Saint Laurent artistic director Anthony Vaccarello has always outsourced the presentation of his men’s collections. After New York, Malibu, Venice and Marrakech, the latest fashion show took place in Berlin last Monday.
Hedi Slimane, who is regarded as one of the most influential designers in men’s fashion, also presents his collections outside of the official programme. His next fashion show will be in Paris on July 3 (AFP).
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.fr. Translated and edited by Simone Preuss.