Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton presents a show worthy of a Hollywood production

To inaugurate its first Louis Vuitton spring summer 2024 collection, Pharrell Williams organized an event with guaranteed buzz.

On Wednesday June 21, 2023, to attend the presentation of the first Louis Vuitton collection by the new, and famous, men's creative director, Pharrell Williams, guests embarked on a yacht at the level of the Quai d'Orsay to reach the Pont- Neuf, opposite La Samaritaine, owned by the LVMH group to which Louis Vuitton belongs. From there, they enter a world in which everything turns to gold.

Because who can, today, apart from the luxury houses, afford to privatize a public place (the Pont-Neuf), cover it with gold, like the chairs and the press kit and organize a show “out of this world”? A parade of more than a hundred silhouettes with a front row made up, among others, of Rihanna, Beyonce, Naomi Campbell, Kim Kardhasian, Zendaya, the artist Takashi Murakami and the South Korean muses who promote the brand in Asia ( JJ Lin, Song Joongki).

The fashion house explains that all of this deployed gold is actually referencing the sun. For this first proposal, the director of men's creation Pharrell Williams considers, according to the press release, the sun as "a universal source of life: a radiance that energizes, heals and unifies men across cultures and beliefs".

Damoflage: From Louis Vuitton Damier pattern to camouflage

As for the runway looks, the spring summer 2024 collection remains in line with what the studio had done previously. Pharrell Williams nevertheless brings his rap touch to it with the “Damier Atari 8-bit” pattern, which injects a digitized charm into the Damier pattern, iconic of the house, by pixelating it. This pixelation (which has the primary effect of hiding the identity of a person in a photo) goes hand in hand with the games of camouflage, which are found in the patterns of colorful landscapes, prints and jacquards, on coats, jackets, pajamas and shirts, as well as coats and bags laser-cut in the Louis Vuitton flower pattern.

Being seen without being seen, here is the paradox explored by a celebrity who finds himself at the head of one of the biggest French luxury houses. However, contrary to some comments arguing that Pharrell Williams is a multidisciplinary artist and not a "couturier" in the strict sense of the term, the extensive collection, some pieces of which are unlikely to be produced for retail sale, has many specificities that would take too long to describe here.

Still, the buzz ensures the survival of Pharrell Williams within the group which, like a wink, offered survival blankets, golden of course, to the guests, at the end of the show, which was followed by an after-party and a live performance by Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams, on the Pont-Neuf.

This article was originally published on FashionUnited.FR, translated and edited to English.