Louis Vuitton Lands Pharrell Williams As Next Menswear Designer

Louis Vuitton has hired Pharrell Williams, the music producer and streetwear entrepreneur, as creative director for menswear, the company announced.

Mr Williams, 49, takes on the role of Virgil Abloh, who died in November 2021. Mr. Abloh was the first black American to be appointed chief designer of a luxury European house. Mr. Williams, a native of Virginia Beach, Virginia, who rose to prominence in the late 1990s as part of the hip hop production duo The Neptunes, is now the second.

The first collection of Mr. Williams’ designs will be shown at Paris Men’s Fashion Week this June, the company said in a statement.

“I’m delighted to welcome Pharrell back home,” said Pietro Beccari, Chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, of Mr. Williams’ early association with the company. “His creative vision beyond fashion will no doubt lead Louis Vuitton into a new and very exciting chapter.”

Mr. Williams and Mr. Abloh had a long-standing relationship and shared admiration for one another. In an interview with the Journal in 2017, Mr Abloh said Mr Williams was one of his five ideal dinner companions. When Mr. Abloh died, Mr. Williams tweeted that he was heartbroken and called his friend “a kind, generous, thoughtful creative genius.” Days after Mr. Abloh’s death, Mr. Williams sat in the front row at the Louis Vuitton show in Miami.

Pharrell Williams with his wife Helen Lasichanh on the red carpet at the 2021 Met Gala.

Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

At Louis Vuitton, the merging of heritage and hype has been a winning game on the men’s side for several years. The company partnered with cult streetwear label Supreme in 2017 and hired Mr. Abloh as its menswear designer the following year. In collections that combined dramatic, avant-garde tailoring with high-end hoodies and sneakers, Mr. Abloh appealed to both the brand’s established clientele with big money and a younger, more flashy clientele.

Now LVMH’s crown jewel, Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, is looking to continue a major growth spurt that has propelled LVMH to the highest stock market valuation in Europe and made Bernard Arnault, the conglomerate’s chairman and CEO, the richest person in the world, recently overtaking Elon Musk .

The Wall Street Journal first reported that Mr Williams and LVMH held talks early Tuesday.

While Mr. Abloh’s profile exploded over the course of his three years at Vuitton, eventually elevating him to become one of the most recognized fashion designers in the world, Mr. Williams would already be taking the position of a true celebrity — one who served as a judge on “The Voice” spoke one character on Sing 2 and racked up two Academy Award nominations, 13 Grammy awards and a string of number one singles.

LVMH’s strategy of partnering with eye-catching, big-name creatives contrasts with the more traditional hiring path recently taken by Kering SA, one of its biggest competitors in the luxury industry. At the end of January, Gucci, Kering’s flagship brand, appointed Sabato de Sarno, a little-known Italian designer who previously worked at Valentino SpA, as its new creative director.

Mr. Williams, on the other hand, is best known as a music hitmaker responsible for chart-topping hits like ‘Happy’ and ‘Blurred Lines’ – but still has a long resume as a clothing entrepreneur.

It comes at a soaring time for Louis Vuitton. The fashion house took 164 years to become the luxury industry’s first $10 billion brand in 2018, but it doubled that number in four years. Analysts say it is the world’s largest luxury brand with sales of $20 billion.

Nevertheless, there is new economic headwind for the company and the industry. Many analysts expect an economic slowdown in key markets, including the US and Europe. It’s also a time of change at Louis Vuitton. This month Chief Executive Michael Burke and Executive Vice President Delphine Arnault, Mr. Arnault’s daughter, handed over leadership of the brand. The takeover of Louis Vuitton takes over the Italian CEO Mr. Beccari, the outgoing boss of Dior.

The fashion house took 164 years to become the luxury industry’s first $10 billion brand in 2018, but it doubled that number in four years. Edouard Jacquinet for the Wall Street Journal

In one of his first forays into fashion in the early 2000s, well into his career as a pop mega-producer, Mr. Williams teamed up with Japanese fashion icon Nigo, who is now creative director of Kenzo, another brand under the LVMH umbrella, to launch pioneering streetwear label Billionaire Boys Club and skateboarding-inspired footwear brand Ice Cream.

A 2005 clip shows a young Mr. Williams at the Ice Cream store in Tokyo, standing next to Nigo, whom he affectionately calls “the General.” “I can’t believe it man, like it’s really happening,” Mr. Williams said, staring in awe at a display case of his brand’s lavender and baby blue sneakers.

Mr. Williams’ earlier forays were lavish and logo-crazy, characterized by full-zip hoodies splayed with neon dollar-sign prints and jewel-toned shoes. Product drops would attract crowds of cool teenagers and 20-year-olds to the brand’s stores in New York and Japan.

Three years later, in what in retrospect looks like a harbinger of the future, Mr. Williams collaborated with Louis Vuitton’s creative director Marc Jacobs on a series of jewelry designs and the blocky ‘Millionaire’ aviator frame. “Vuitton is a school to me,” Mr. Williams said in a 2008 interview about his association with Mr. Jacobs. “I just learned a lot here.” Today, pairs of these sunnies continue to sell for over $1,000 on resale sites like Grailed.

Pharrell Williams and Japanese fashion icon Nigo founded pioneering streetwear label Billionaire Boys Club.

Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Further collaborations with fashion heavyweights such as Diesel, Chanel and Moncler followed. Mr. Williams has also worked with Adidas for nearly a decade on a co-branded line of clothing and footwear, including the sock-like NMD Hu sneakers with New Age words like “Breathe,” “Clouds,” and “Body.” along the front.

In recent years, Mr. Williams has joined the celebrity rush to launch Humanrace-branded skincare products, which include Rice Powder cleanser for $36 and Ozone Body Protection sunscreen for $52. sold dollars.

However, his biggest influence in the fashion world is probably his own trendsetting choice of clothing, although he has felt reticent about that role in the past. “I’m a little embarrassed to be a fashion character,” he told the Journal in 2014. “I think everyone cares about what they wear, even if you dress conservatively.”

In 2015 he received the Fashion Icon Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and took to the stage to accept the award in a blue leather jacket and worn jeans. “No one has better style than ordinary American people,” he said during a short speech. “Why? Because they’re real and they live it every day. I could never be as cool as them, but I like to take notes.”

In recent years, LVMH Moët Hennessy has worked closely with musicians. Spanish singer Rosalía performed at the Louis Vuitton menswear show in Paris in January.

Photo: Giovanni Giannoni/WWD/Getty Images

Lately, Mr. Williams has been the embodiment of the boundless mix of streetwear and luxury at the moment, sporting both $240 putty-print hoodies from the Cactus Plant Flea Market, run by his former assistant Cynthia Lu, as well as diamond-encrusted Tiffany & Co. Sunglasses. (Tiffany & Co. is another LVMH brand.)

Over the past decade, the broader LVMH conglomerate has increasingly collaborated with celebrities, particularly musicians. In 2019, it partnered with Rihanna on Fenty, a luxury clothing line. While that brand fizzled out after just two years, LVMH remains a shareholder in their booming Fenty beauty line. Nigo, Pharrell’s longtime collaborator, also works part-time as a music producer and used his debut with Kenzo to tease songs from his 2022 album I Know Nigo!

Spanish singer Rosalía appeared at Louis Vuitton’s menswear show in January, created by the house’s menswear design studio and featuring pieces by New York streetwear designer KidSuper. This partnership, while lively, did not bring clarity to the long-term future of Louis Vuitton menswear.

Since Mr. Abloh’s death, there has been much speculation as to who Louis Vuitton would appoint as his successor. Among the many names to be associated with the job were independent designers such as Martine Rose and Grace Wales Bonner.

Bernard Arnault, head of the luxury goods group LVMH, has a fortune greater than that of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. WSJ’s Nick Kostov explains how the French business tycoon amassed his fortune and how he plans to keep it under his family’s control. Photo: Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Write to Jacob Gallagher at [email protected] and Nick Kostov at [email protected]