Perspective: Louis Vuitton’s decision to hire Pharrell Williams as the new creative director for its menswear line reaffirms celebrity allure, the impact of music and streetwear on luxury, and the belief that fashion is a skill and not merely an attitude.
follows the late Virgil Abloh, who was the first Black American to serve as artistic director of a French luxury brand. Abloh hadn’t studied fashion design, but he had worked his way through false starts, fashion competitions, his own brand, DJing and collaborating until he grabbed one of the industry’s few brass rings. He arrived at Louis Vuitton with a fan base that saw themselves in him. Abloh was groundbreaking.
The choice of Williams is not. It feels a bit like a company trying to recapture a certain excitement and sense of change that was fueled by possibility — maybe, just maybe, a door had swung open for other Black designers, and someone working away in a backroom or struggling to keep their own company afloat could win the big job. But Williams was not struggling. He wasn’t pounding away in the shadows. He was sitting in the spotlight wearing diamond bedazzled sunglasses and Chanel jackets.
Williams also has a high appreciation for a specific kind of eye-candy fashion: self-consciously defiant and flashy. He dresses the same way a producer might put together a song: freely sampling, always riffing and trying to keep the vibe not just of the moment but also beyond it. In his public appearances, Williams often walks a fine line between parody and subversiveness, stunt and style. With his slight build and high cheekbones, he can look younger than his 49 years.
It’s hard to imagine that Vuitton would have taken a similar tack if it had been looking for someone to helm its womenswear division. While womenswear owes a debt to hip-hop, street style and athleticism, contemporary menswear is far more deeply indebted to those vernaculars. Choosing someone who moves nimbly between them proved irresistible.
But more than anything, the choice of Williams makes it clear how much the definition of designer has changed in a generation. In the popular imagination, the designer is still a lone figure draping and sketching, overseeing and demanding. Although that remains true at smaller entities and in a few rarefied spaces, in larger companies, there are a fleet of designers working on a multitude of divisions.
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