Pharrell Williams poses on the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles earlier this month.

Robyn Beck/AFP through Getty Images

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Robyn Beck/AFP through Getty Images

Pharrell Williams poses on the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles earlier this month.

Robyn Beck/AFP through Getty Images

Singer, songwriter, rapper, producer, designer and philanthropist Pharrell Williams is including one other title to his checklist: Louis Vuitton’s males’s artistic director.

The luxurious home announced on Tuesday that Williams would take the job beforehand held by famend designer Virgil Abloh, the primary Black inventive director at Louis Vuitton, who died of most cancers in November 2021 on the age of 41.

Williams’ first assortment might be revealed in June throughout Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. But he is no stranger to the model.

“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,” mentioned Louis Vuitton Chairman and CEO Pietro Beccari. “His creative vision beyond fashion will undoubtedly lead Louis Vuitton towards a new and very exciting chapter.”

The 13-time Grammy winner and two-time Oscar nominee has many years of expertise working with luxurious manufacturers, based on the Associated Press and New York Times.

Williams collaborated with LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) within the early aughts on sun shades and jewellery. The sun shades assortment, referred to as Millionaire, stays so in style that shades are listed at more than double their original price on resale websites, and Abloh — a buddy of Williams — reissued the road in 2018.

Beyond that, Williams had a preferred sneaker collaboration with Chanel in 2017 (through which he turned the first man to seem in a Chanel advert) and a unisex clothes assortment with Karl Lagerfeld in 2019. He’s additionally labored with Moncler, Adidas Originals and Tiffany & Company.

And he is launched his personal manufacturers, too.

Williams co-founded the influential streetwear label Billionaire Boys Club in 2003 (alongside Japanese designer Nigo, who’s now the artistic director of Kenzo, which can also be owned by LVMH). During the pandemic, he helped create a portable cutlery set within the hopes of limiting single-use plastics in out of doors eating. And he is additionally launched Humanrace, a skincare and wellness firm.

“Pharrell Williams is a visionary whose creative universes expand from music to art, and to fashion — establishing himself as a cultural global icon over the past twenty years,” Louis Vuitton mentioned, including that he reinforces the corporate’s values of “innovation, pioneer spirit and entrepreneurship.”

The fashion icon has large footwear to fill

Pharrell Williams performs “Happy” onstage throughout the Grammy Awards in 2015.

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Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Pharrell Williams performs “Happy” onstage throughout the Grammy Awards in 2015.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Williams fills a place that is been vacant since Abloh’s loss of life.

Abloh rose to prominence because the artistic director for the rapper previously often called Kanye West, and went on to discovered the haute streetwear label Off-White earlier than becoming a member of Louis Vuitton in 2018.

He grew the role from “designer” to “curator,” the AP stories, increasing his pursuits into issues like housewares, jewellery and structure. He broke boundaries himself as one among few Black designers main a luxurious style home and labored to pave the best way for others after him.

“He reinvented the role of a creative director, injecting it with hip-hop’s penchant for remixing, skateboarding’s sense of community and a desire for social progress,” Business of Fashion writes. “And he helped open doors to a wider cast of creatives, engaging directly with his followers, online and off, and offering them ‘cheat codes’ and ‘trails of information’ for how to launch brands of their own.”

While many individuals — together with big-name celebrities — cheered the information of Williams’ appointment on social media, some have been confused by and even essential of the choice to switch him with a celeb moderately than a youthful designer with formal coaching.

“Everything Virgil stood for [was] to open doors,” one consumer wrote. “This is a weird appointment.”

For some, Williams’ most recognizable style second might have been the massive hat he wore to the 2014 Grammy Awards — or, extra not too long ago, his controversial teardrop-shaped, diamond-studded Tiffany sunglasses.

But GQ notes that he is been a method icon all through his profession, from mixing skateboarder-wear with hip-hop fashion because the frontman of N.E.R.D within the early 2000s to embracing womenswear and gender-neutral clothes in recent times.

That began with “the ‘I can pull that off’ thing,” Williams advised the journal in 2019, when he posed on the quilt of its “New Masculinity” issue sporting a puffy robe.

“When you listen to yourself and you’re comfortable in who you are, you wear what you feel like fits and looks right on you,” he added. “And that’s it.”