Pharrell Williams takes over Louis Vuitton men's

Pharrell Williams takes over Louis Vuitton men's

“On 14 February 2023 Louis Vuitton made the musician Pharrell Williams, who has no design training, creative director of its menswear after Virgil Abloh's death, and he opened with a show on the Pont Neuf on 20 June 2023.”

On 14 February 2023 Louis Vuitton, the biggest luxury brand in the world, named the American musician and producer Pharrell Williams as its men's creative director. The job had been empty since 28 November 2021, when Virgil Abloh, who had run Vuitton's menswear since 2018, died of cancer at 41. Williams was 49. He had won 13 Grammy awards, had started the streetwear label Billionaire Boys Club with the Japanese designer Nigo, and had made sunglasses (2004) and jewellery (2008) for Vuitton, but he had never trained as a fashion designer. Fashion insiders had been guessing at names such as Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner and Samuel Ross, or at someone from outside fashion altogether. In the months between, the house had put on men's shows by its own studio, with guest stars and, in January 2023, the young designer Colm Dillane of KidSuper.

The choice was the first big decision of Pietro Beccari, who became Vuitton's chief executive on 1 February 2023. The Business of Fashion reported that he had recommended Williams to Bernard Arnault, the head of the owner LVMH, in December 2022, before he even started. Beccari wanted a 'real megastar' to be the brand's ambassador as well as its designer: Vuitton, he said, had long stopped being only a maker and seller of products, and Williams, like Abloh, was in touch with many worlds. Williams agreed to give the house about a third of his time. Critics called the move a sign that luxury cared more about fame than design, and the Washington Post's Robin Givhan found it disheartening that a pure designer was judged not enough; others saw a continuation of Abloh's work of bringing streetwear and hip-hop into luxury.

Williams showed his first collection on the evening of 20 June 2023. Vuitton closed the Pont Neuf, the oldest standing bridge in Paris and a few steps from its headquarters, and covered it in a golden Damier chessboard. Guests came by boat from the Musée d'Orsay, a choir and an orchestra played music he had produced, and the audience included Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Rihanna, Zendaya and LeBron James; Jay-Z performed at the end. Williams made the Damier check, which is older than the Monogram, the star of the collection: a pixelated 'Damoflage' that mixes it with camouflage, a pixel version by the artist E.T., faces micro-embroidered by the painter Henry Taylor, and sharp tailoring. His first bag was a softer Speedy, shown days earlier in a campaign with Rihanna. Vuitton told the Business of Fashion that the show had more than 500 million online views in three days.

Williams has since shown a new collection about every six months, each in a different place: a Hong Kong waterfront with sailor suits (30 November 2023), a cowboy show in a Paris garden (16 January 2024), a checkerboard lawn at UNESCO (18 June 2024), the Louvre's Cour Carrée with Nigo (21 January 2025), a life-size Snakes and Ladders board in front of the Centre Pompidou (24 June 2025), a glass house beside the Fondation Louis Vuitton (20 January 2026) and a surf beach with a giant wave (23 June 2026). The first collection reached the shops on 4 January 2024, with pop-up stores in more than 50 places. Not everything was loved: PETA attacked a made-to-order crocodile 'Millionaire' Speedy bag said to cost $1 million in November 2023, and some critics found the later collections safe.

Did it work? LVMH does not report Vuitton's sales, still less menswear sales, so nobody outside the company can say what Williams' collections sold. LVMH's own report on 2023 said the show had stirred enthusiasm around the world, and its fashion and leather division, which includes Vuitton, had record revenue that year (up 14% on a like-for-like basis). The division then slipped: flat in 2024 (down 1%), down 5% in 2025 and down 1% in the first half of 2026, though it grew 1% in the second quarter. The lasting change is the model. The biggest luxury house showed that it was ready to hire a famous musician for his audience and his stage as much as for his pattern-cutting, and to treat music, film and spectacle as part of what it sells.

What happened

  1. 2023

  2. Louis Vuitton names Pharrell Williams its new men's creative director, effective at once, with his first collection to be shown at Paris Men's Fashion Week in June. The chief executive, Pietro Beccari, in office since 1 February, welcomes him back after their work together in 2004 (sunglasses) and 2008 (jewellery) and says his vision beyond fashion will lead the house into a new chapter. The job had been empty since Virgil Abloh's death on 28 November 2021.

    2 rue du Pont-Neuf, Paris: Louis Vuitton's headquarters at the foot of the bridge, where Williams' appointment of 14 February 2023 was made

  3. The hire divides fashion. The Business of Fashion asks whether Vuitton has outgrown fashion, the critic Robin Givhan finds it disheartening that a pure designer was judged not enough, and fans of Williams' style are delighted; others see a continuation of Abloh's mix of streetwear and luxury.

  4. A few days before the show Louis Vuitton releases Williams' first campaign: Rihanna, photographed by Keizō Kitajima and Martine Syms, carrying a softer Speedy, the bag that is his first proposal for the house. The campaign is also draped on the boats that will take guests to the show.

  5. On the evening of 20 June 2023 Williams shows his first collection, Spring-Summer 2024, on the Pont Neuf, closed and covered in a golden Damier chessboard. Guests come by boat from the Musée d'Orsay; a choir and orchestra play music he produced; Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Rihanna, Zendaya and LeBron James are in the audience, and Jay-Z performs at the end with Williams. The Damier check becomes the star: Damoflage, E.T.'s pixel version, Henry Taylor's micro-embroidered faces, tailoring and the first Speedy.

    Pont Neuf, Paris: closed to traffic and covered in a golden Damier chessboard for Williams' debut show on 20 June 2023

  6. The Business of Fashion reports that Louis Vuitton's internal data show more than 500 million online views of the show in three days. Beccari says he judges such events by 'gut feeling'. Critics online question the house closing a public bridge in a cost-of-living crisis, and Angelo Flaccavento finds the Damier repeated too often.

  7. PETA sends Williams an open letter attacking the 'Millionaire' Speedy, a made-to-order crocodile-skin bag said to cost $1 million, first seen on Williams and on the actor Jacob Elordi; critics call the price tone-deaf.

  8. Williams' second show, the Men's Pre-Fall 2024 collection, stands on the Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong under the night sky: sailor uniforms, tropical floral shirts and surf details, 'Hawaii in Hong Kong'.

    Avenue of Stars, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong: the waterfront promenade where the Pre-Fall 2024 show was staged on 30 November 2023
  9. 2024

  10. The debut collection reaches the shops, with Louis Vuitton dressing spaces in more than 50 places, from a Champs-Élysées residency and West Hollywood to Selfridges and Seoul. A campaign with LeBron James shows the Speedy P9, and a 24-hour computer-made 'world tour' of the bag runs from Shanghai to Paris. WWD calls it Williams' first big commercial test.

  11. The Fall-Winter 2024 show opens Paris Fashion Week in the Jardin d'Acclimatation on an American West theme: Native American drumming, silver-tipped cowboy boots and denim chaps, handbags made with artists of the Dakota and Lakota nations, shoes with Timberland, and a Mumford & Sons song produced by Williams. It is his third show.

    Jardin d'Acclimatation, Bois de Boulogne, Paris: the park where the cowboy show of 16 January 2024 was staged

  12. LVMH reports record 2023 results: Fashion & Leather Goods revenue of 42.2 billion euros, up 14% like for like. Its report says Williams' first show on the Pont Neuf stirred enthusiasm around the world (and wrongly dates it to July). It does not say how much Vuitton, let alone menswear, sold.

  13. Under the title 'The World is Yours', Williams shows his Spring-Summer 2025 collection on a lawn mown in Vuitton's checkerboard at UNESCO's headquarters, under a wire globe and rows of flags, with the Eiffel Tower behind and an audience of 1,500, less than six weeks before the Paris Olympics.

    UNESCO headquarters, place de Fontenoy, Paris: the checkerboard lawn of the show of 18 June 2024
  14. 2025

  15. Williams shows with Nigo, his partner in Billionaire Boys Club, around 24 display cases of archive pieces on a circular runway in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre; Nigo's workwear archive meets Vuitton's monogram in Japanese techniques. Reuters counts it as his fifth collection.

    Cour Carrée, the Louvre, Paris: the courtyard where Williams and Nigo showed on 21 January 2025, among 24 archive display cases

  16. LVMH reports 2024: Fashion & Leather Goods revenue of 41.1 billion euros, down 1% like for like, after the 14% rise of 2023; profit from recurring operations falls 10%. The report talks about Vuitton's Olympic trunks and its New York flagship, not about menswear.

  17. Williams takes Vuitton from Paris to India in front of the Centre Pompidou: a life-size Snakes and Ladders board by the architect Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai reframes the Damier, models wear jewelled cricket jerseys and Bollywood-style tailoring, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Bradley Cooper, Karol G, j-hope and Future sit in the front row.

    Place Georges-Pompidou, Paris: the plaza in front of the Centre Pompidou where the Snakes and Ladders show stood on 24 June 2025
  18. 2026

  19. For Fall-Winter 2026 Williams designs a conceptual 'DROPHAUS', a house of wood and glass in a garden of artificial grass, in a giant cube outside the Fondation Louis Vuitton, opening the year of the Monogram's 130th anniversary. The clothes are muted and classic; Complex calls it his safest collection yet.

    Fondation Louis Vuitton, Bois de Boulogne, Paris: the show of 20 January 2026 stood in a giant cube outside it

  20. LVMH reports 2025: Fashion & Leather Goods revenue of 37.8 billion euros, down 5% like for like, with profit from recurring operations down 13% and a margin of 35%. The report says that Vuitton's latest shows by Nicolas Ghesquière and Williams show its creativity.

  21. Williams' latest show to date, Spring-Summer 2027, turns the Cité internationale universitaire into a beach: sand, mist and a giant artificial wave, a 'Surfer Dandy' in nubby pinstripes and board-short trousers, and new tracks with Future and Lil Baby. Missy Elliott, Skepta, Jeremy Allen White and Victor Wembanyama are in the front row; Complex grades the clothes B and the set A.

    Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, 14th arrondissement: the student campus where the surf show was staged on 23 June 2026