Louis Vuitton and Pharrell Williams are feeling the love this Valentine's Day. The iconic French fashion house announced on February 14 that Williams will join the maison as men's creative director, with his first collection to be shown in Paris in June. He's stepping into the role left vacant after his friend and collaborator Virgil Abloh's untimely passing in November 2021. To say that this appointment is a big deal barely captures it, but, yeah...it's a big deal.
This isn't the first time Williams has worked with Louis Vuitton. He collaborated with the brand in 2004, and then again in 2008. And one of his longtime partners in crime, Nigo—with whom Williams founded the brand Billionaire Boys Club in 2003—is already part of the family. Nigo has served as the artistic director of Kenzo (which is owned by Vuitton's parent company LVMH) since September 2021 and worked with Abloh on the LV2 collaboration that debuted in 2020. Throw in the fact that Williams has been flirting with the folks at Tiffany & Co. (also an LVMH holding) for a while, and you've got a lot of tea leaves that were ready for reading before this announcement broke.
Still, there's a sense of surprise about Williams' new role. Rumors have swirled for months about who would take up the mantle at LV men's. Would it be Colm Dillane of KidSuper, who guest-designed pieces in the most recent men's collection shown in Paris in January? Maybe another up-and-coming designer like Grace Wales Bonner? Perhaps LVMH would even follow the burgeoning fashion world trend of appointing someone mostly unknown outside of industry circles and design studios. Instead—plot twist!—the company tapped a megastar in Williams.
"I am glad to welcome Pharrell back home, after our collaborations in 2004 and 2008 for Louis Vuitton, as our new Men’s Creative Director," Louis Vuitton chairman and CEO Pietro Beccari said in a statement. "His creative vision beyond fashion will undoubtedly lead Louis Vuitton towards a new and very exciting chapter."
What exactly that chapter looks like remains to be seen, of course. But there's little doubt that there's something big on the horizon. With Williams at the helm, how could there not be?