PARIS – Last Thursday, the countdown to Pharrell Williams’ debut for Louis Vuitton officially began with the reveal of his first campaign as creative director of menswear, featuring a pregnant Rihanna.

The image didn’t appear on Vuitton’s social media accounts. As an alternative, Williams posed in front of a large billboard on the Seine-facing side of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and posted the image to his Instagram account, underlining just how much clout he enjoys as the primary global music star to take the reins of a top luxury house.

Later that morning, Williams appeared at Vuitton’s headquarters wearing the identical outfit: a black biker jacket and flared pants created from the home’s signature Epi leather, which is more commonly used for baggage and wallets. The look, it seems, was pulled from his spring 2024 collection, attributable to be unveiled on Tuesday at 9.30 p.m. on the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris within the season’s most highly anticipated show.

Louis Vuitton chairman and chief executive officer Pietro Beccari, joining via Zoom from a automotive somewhere in Greece where he had just attended the brand’s high jewelry presentation, gently chided his recent recruit.

“Pharrell is unveiling the gathering piece by piece, since it is already 20 days that he wears the show,” he said, noting that Williams is approaching the task from the attitude of a prolific luxury shopper. “He’s impatient and I said, ‘He’s the client, right? In order that’s it.’”

“I’m the client,” assented Williams, who had accessorized the look with a $1.2 million Richard Mille RM 88 Automatic Tourbillon Smiley watch, solid gold grills, a yellow diamond necklace spelling out the words “God Is,” and an updated version of the custom-made Tiffany & Co. diamond sunglasses which have develop into his signature eyewear during the last 18 months.

That particular style has made the “Completely satisfied” hitmaker a hot commodity for luxury brands for the last twenty years.

Lest anyone forget, Williams has been energetic in high-end fashion since codesigning a line of eyewear with Marc Jacobs at Vuitton in 2004.

That was followed by a jewellery collection for the home in 2008, when Beccari was a senior executive on the brand; projects with Moncler and Moynat, and a partnership with Chanel, along with his involvement with the more mass-market G-Star Raw and Adidas labels.

Williams appeared in Chanel campaigns, walked in its runway shows, and created a one-off sneaker with Chanel and Adidas Originals in 2017 that generated a waiting list of 120,000 people for 500 pairs. After that got here a unisex clothing collection in 2019, designed with the brand’s late creative director Karl Lagerfeld.

“He began in fashion with Louis Vuitton; he went to college with Karl and now he’s got the job of his dreams, which I feel he deserves, because he’s a genius at large,” Beccari declared.

Williams is aware that not everyone seems to be thrilled along with his appointment, which cements Vuitton’s positioning as a “cultural” brand with broad reach across segments including sports, gaming, music and art.

Some commentators were disenchanted that the job didn’t go to one in every of the young designers rumored to be within the running, though his predecessor Virgil Abloh also got here from a non-fashion background, redefining the role of creative director into something closer to a curator.

“I didn’t go to Central Saint Martins, but I also didn’t go to Julliard either in music and I mean, we see how that turned out,” said the performer, who has won 13 Grammy Awards. “It’s cool. That’s a particularly reasonable statement. But neither did Vivienne Westwood, right? Tadao Ando was self-taught. I mean, he’s the GOAT, right? I only aspire to precise myself.”

As unexpected because the offer was, “it feels natural,” he continued.

Williams was first introduced to Louis Vuitton through rappers and Harlem tailor Dapper Dan’s bootleg logo designs, but back then, the actual brand felt way out of his league.

Today, he’s firmly entrenched in the luxurious world, notably through his friendship with Japanese designer Nigo, who helped him to launch the streetwear labels Billionaire Boys Club and Icecream, and is now creative director at Kenzo, a brand also owned by luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Nigo helped him design the Millionaire sunglasses for Vuitton, and subsequently created several capsule collections with Abloh for Vuitton.

“It’s crazy because you’ll be able to see a photograph of myself with Kanye [West] and Virgil wearing the sunglasses, so it’s like all of this serendipitous connection,” Williams said.

After the image was taken, West and Abloh went on to found their very own fashion lines, laying the groundwork for the crossover between streetwear and luxury that’s the template for many menswear today.

“Every single day, I gotta to pinch myself since it’s an appointment, and I used to be chosen,” Williams continued. “Pietro saw something, and I’m touched by that and I honor that on daily basis.”

The 2 began discussing the prospect of Williams taking up the menswear role in November last 12 months. The announcement got here swiftly after Beccari officially joined Vuitton from Dior on Feb. 1, capping a storied 17-year profession at LVMH.

“What would you do? Right? Like, you realize, you get to are available in here with the world’s biggest house; dare I say, unlimited resources. I hardly hear ‘no,’ and after I do, it’s at all times for an actual constructive reason, after which I’m given a possibility to do something even greater, even greater. This has been nothing but a present,” Williams said.

Over the previous couple of months, he has drip-fed clues about his debut collection. At his Something within the Water music festival in his hometown of Virginia Beach, Va., in April, the hip-hop star appeared on stage in a biker jacket with rhinestone patches.

A web based teaser for the event showed him sitting on top of a monogram-embossed wood pyramid with the tagline: “Virginia is for LVers,” a twist on the state’s slogan “Virginia is for Lovers” that appeared on Vuitton-branded merchandise sold on the event.

He noted that his appointment was announced on Valentine’s Day. “It’s like love at first sight,” he said. “LV is for Louis Vuitton, nevertheless it’s also for lovers, you realize: lovers of the moment, lovers of detail, lovers of this time and folks who want to utterly squeeze the very best out of life, right down to the last drop.”

He sprinkled extra pointers into the teaser image, which showed Rihanna wearing a shirt in a pixelated Damier check that is just partially buttoned, exposing her pregnancy bump. Her arms are laden with Speedy bags of assorted sizes in Vuitton’s signature monogram, but in a variety of primary colours, including red, yellow and green, and manufactured from leather as an alternative of canvas.

“Here, I knew I desired to do a pair things: one, I knew I desired to make my presence known in bags,” said Williams, citing past projects just like the oversized purple Haut à Courroies bag he commissioned from Hermès, and his stint as ambassador for Chanel’s Gabrielle bag.

“Bags are very necessary to me, it’s very necessary to the home, and what higher person to go on that journey with us than my really good friend?” Williams said of Rihanna, who also has a business partnership with LVMH on her Fenty Beauty line.

“The second thing is, I knew that I wanted to essentially lean into the Damier, something that hadn’t had such a terrific concentration in it, and we did so by utilizing the Damier as a platform and as a recent artistic discipline, and now we have some really interesting expressions,” he said of the checkerboard motif.

Williams said he was constructing on the work of his predecessors, including Abloh, who made history by becoming the primary African-American artistic director on the French luxury house. The boys’s position had remained vacant since Abloh’s premature death in November 2021.

“His spirit continues to be here and now that I’m here, it’s not cancelling out anything from the past. If anything, it’s just continuing to evolve,” he said.

Beccari noted that Williams is before everything a fan of the brand. “He loves details and likes to be very elegant in every occasion,” the chief said.

He described the push-and-pull that defines his relationships with designers, each in his previous jobs and now with Williams and Nicolas Ghesquière, the artistic director of womenswear at Vuitton.

“You may have to search out the equilibrium, to search out the potential of giving them the liberty of expression of the creative mind, and at the identical time, you’re liable for an enormous business, and you have got to get some rationality into it, and that’s the difficult part,” he said. “I think I created special relationships with each single one in every of them, as I’m creating with Nicolas and with Pharrell, and that’s the pleasure part, while you see this balance.”

He said it involved making concessions on each side. “I attempt to be at all times authentic with them and tell them what I feel. I don’t have any hidden agenda,” Beccari said.

He praised Williams for tackling the duty with a “humble spirit” and establishing an excellent rapport along with his team. “They see not the star, the superstar, they see an excellent human being. That’s what makes his coming to Vuitton not only very daring, nevertheless it makes it an incredible, positive, energetic addition to the incredible team that now we have,” he said.

Beccari declined to supply figures, but said that Vuitton has potential to extend its men’s business without adding recent stores. “Pharrell has a vital role,” he said. “I think now we have a incredible network. We want to use what now we have, but when it comes to potential, being already big, I feel it could possibly be even greater, and with Pharrell, prosper much more.”

An entrepreneur whose activities extend to film and tv, music festivals and nonprofits, Williams is conscious about the stakes at Vuitton, the world’s biggest luxury brand and the primary to generate annual revenues of greater than 20 billion euros.

“It’s a giant, big, big, big, big, big plane that we take off in once we do it, you realize? And here we’re on a tarmac at once, headed toward the twentieth, and we’re about to take flight,” he said.

It guarantees to be a spectacular event in every respect, and one that can go down within the annals of fashion. Williams confirmed that the front row of his show could be stacked with celebrity friends. “It’s like ‘Game of Thrones,’ House Vuitton. It’s very necessary. It’s just such a momentous occasion,” he said.

Expect exclusive music on the soundtrack. “One [track] that I’ve been working on for, like, 10 years,” teased Williams, who has arrange a mini studio in his office at Vuitton. “I’m entering into it. I would like you to see it. I would like you to feel it.”

He was confident ahead of his big night, buoyed by the support of his design studio and Vuitton’s master artisans. “Once you add creativity to the very best arc of quality, you get this amazing alchemical response, which is a crazy collection, a crazy show, crazy energy and crazy messaging,” he promised.