It’s been three years now since Pharrell Williams began his headline residency at Louis Vuitton menswear, following his earlier cameo design appearances for the house back in 2004 and 2008. During this period—the typical single orbit of creative director contracts in fashion—the luxury industry in which LV is a figurehead marque has endured some extremely heavy weather. Yet despite this, and despite the cynicism amongst some that his was a celebrity-first appointment, Williams has proven himself a fashion starchitect: as well as orchestrating some of this decade’s greatest fashion shows (most especially that first), the Louis Vuitton menswear studio has thrived under his oversight.
The narrative conceit the studio riffed on while developing this collection with Williams was that they were dressing a weatherman sent away on assignment, who arrived with no luggage and an urgent need of outerwear. Even though Williams’ American-ness is so central to his voice, this collection’s more casual elements demonstrated how after three years of living in Paris his accent is becoming authentically Gallic.
Through the application of his music-producer’s mindset he delivered a collection featuring plenty of respectfully adapted samples from classic French wearables from the ’80s and ’90s. The leather-shouldered gilets and jackets, plus their cursive labels, took me back to the iconic French brands Chipie and Chevignon. The lug-commando-soled boat shoes and boots had a Palladium-adjacent footprint, and the comic strip print that told the weatherman’s story very distantly evoked Moncler’s Monduck care labels (first introduced when the brand was French). Drawn from a much earlier chapter in the French canon was the incroyable storm-visible yellow Breton fisherman’s overcoat in waterproofed leather, a classic previously riffed on by designers from Saint Laurent to Cardin to Gaultier.
Leather chinos with raised embroideries pointed to prep, while “leather denim” looks whose “wash” was drawn by laser into comic-like panels of travelogue illustration were a fresh example of the studio’s R&D in decorative material fabrication. Similarly, a real denim jacket and pants in indigo were edged in a raised, 3D printed mud effect. After these, a monogram-stitched full look in workwear duck canvas seemed bracingly straightforward, but still highly handsome.
The silhouettes billowed back and forth from slightly oversized to gently shrunken. And in a house that will always sink or swim on the strength of its bag offering, we saw plenty of fun new-style/old-style innovations, including a rectangular, shoulder-slung journalist/camera bag called the Nils. There were many other interesting atmospheric fronts to enjoy in a collection that seemed set on rearticulating niche menswear recipes through a filter of technologically-driven savoir faire and a progressive mindset.
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