Pharrell Williams kicked off Paris trend week on Tuesday evening with a menswear present that cemented Louis Vuitton’s place as the brand new luxurious chief in streetwear.
The gathering was created in partnership with Nigo, a Japanese designer and probably the most influential figures in streetwear.
Williams, who has held the place of inventive director of Louis Vuitton menswear since 2023, has a decades-long friendship with Nigo. The partnership follows a protracted line of collaborations between them together with co-founding the streetwear labels Billionaire Boys Membership and Icecream in 2003. Williams has referred to as Nigo “one of many best curators of style and purveyors of what’s subsequent”. Williams has additionally been described as a visionary however for this assortment the duo took inspiration from the previous. The present notes described the present as gazing “into the longer term via the telescope of historical past”.
Exploring the codes of streetwear and dandyism, the present featured all the things from varsity jackets to neat tailor-made fits. Held in a large purpose-built mirrored field positioned instantly in entrance of the Louvre pyramid, fashions walked round a mauve-coloured catwalk upon which sat 24 vitrines showcasing an eclectic collection of gadgets together with sneakers, T-shirts, a boombox and gold Blackberry telephone. Some items had been taken from the non-public archives of Williams and Nigo, who’re avid collectors, whereas others got here from earlier Louis Vuitton reveals. It aimed to function a visible historical past of the items that had impressed and knowledgeable the duo in creating a brand new joint assortment.
Huge-leg and low-rise silhouettes throughout denim and tailoring paid homage to the early 2000s. Camo, the normal streetwear trope, was reimagined in summary and pixelated patterns. The whole lot from beanies to boots was monogrammed – unsurprising, contemplating it was Nigo who pioneered the thought of a loud and logo-heavy aesthetic together with his first model A Bathing Ape (BAPE) in 1993. Three a long time later he revisited the thought, plastering baggage with cut-out facial silhouettes of himself and Williams and paying homage to the model’s Parisian roots by scribbling others with the phrases “Pont Neuf” and “Since 1854”.
Nigo had beforehand collaborated with Louis Vuitton underneath its late menswear creative director Virgil Abloh on a 2020 capsule assortment. On the time Abloh described him as an “engineer” in bridging the separation between “excessive and low”. He has been inventive director of Kenzo since 2021, which can be owned by LVMH, Louis Vuitton’s guardian firm.
His partnership with Williams hints at LVMH’s dedication to streetwear, a market projected to be value $637bn (£516bn) by 2032.
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The present was delayed by greater than 90 minutes, reportedly to permit the Arnault household time to return to Paris from Washington the place they’d attended Donald Trump’s inauguration. There LVMH’s CEO Bernard Arnault alongside together with his daughter Delphine (chair and chief government of Dior) and son Alexandre (deputy chief government of LVMH’s wines and spirits division) had sat behind former presidents Invoice Clinton and Barack Obama. At Tuesday evening’s Paris trend week present they sat within the entrance row alongside the actors Adrien Brody and Bradley Cooper, the basketball participant Victor Wembanyama and members of the Ok-pop band Got7.
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