Yee-haw! Pharrell Williams’s follow-up Paris Fashion Week collection hailed the Black cowboy and the native American

Was it worth staying up to catch the livestream of the Louis Vuitton autumn/winter 2024 menswear collection at 3am? No. For the rest of the world, this was probably the greatest show of the entire fashion season, but a lot less for us. Louis Vuitton had no intention of playing down the spectacle that their menswear show is turning out to be. For his third, Pharrell Williams has put on quite a presentation, with a scenorama that could have been a snap of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There was no mistaking what the theme would be when the set was revealed. In fact, earlier, LV shared on their website, just below the space dedicated to the livestream, a reel featuring Black Disney animator Ron Husband illustrating. He said imperturbably, “me and this drawing, me and this cowboy—we are one and the same.” Perhaps, Mr Williams is part of that equation, too.

As Americans emerged out of the Iowa caucuses with results that surprised no one (that was another show altogether), Mr William took the opportunity to pay a flashy homage to cowboy country and the land of the American native (there was even the Native Voices of Resistance band, playing indigenous music between mixes of pop songs Mr Williams no doubt picked, which included a previously unreleased Miley Cyrus, Doctor). Perhaps a clever reminder that Louis Vuitton has a bag factory, Rochambeau Ranch, in ulu Alvarado, Texas, which was opened by no less than (Iowa caucus victor) Donald Trump in 2019? Or, homage to Mr Arbloh’s state of birth, as the title of show made clear: Paris Virginia—no coincidence that there is, as many Americans know, a Paris in Virginia? A French brand is increasingly looking and feeling less French. LV ranch wear! We’re only surprised, despite our early-morning bleariness, that on the set, there was no rodeo.

Mr Williams is proving that he is no tenderfoot even when he has two main collections (plus one resort) under his studded belt, with the unmissable LV buckle, no less (he let the models wear the lasso). This was not Raf Simons’s take on the American West when he was at Calvin Klein. This was more; it was Mr Williams going whole-hog. This had to be an ace-high collection that could show off Western frippery that was more Elvis Presley than Blake Shelton. All the ornamental clichés were there: Collar tips, bolo ties, buckaroo lavallière, turquoise buttons, blanket stitches, embroidery of cacti, and every Western motif you can think of. And all the articles of clothing you may need for fancy ranch life (even if you were merely dining in a Tex-Mex restaurant in the suburbs of Paris, France): Rockabilly shirts, drifter coats, chore jackets, embossed (with LV logos) leather jackets, embroidered jeans and truckers, and even fringed chaps, not to mention the finishing touches of hats, boots, and spurs, and the Westernised Speedy. Between those, some Virgil Abloh-era skirts (or skorts?) and Chanel-looking round-neck jackets or cardigans that Mr Williams himself might have worn during his bromance with the late Karl Lagerfeld, who, incidentally, showed the Chanel Metiers d’Art show in Dallas in 2013.

The media had already predicted LV’s menswear ascendancy. “Pharrell Williams dominates the spotlight once again for Paris Fashion Week” went a headline two days ago in The Straits Times, running an AFP story. In fact, he was lauded as a “headline act in the increasingly celebrity-dominated industry”. Re-watching the show, we sensed that Mr Williams had his many fashionable friends in mind when he designed—or decorated (both, we noted, were synonymous)—the clothes, based on classic LV salables, such as souvenir jackets, baseball jackets, denim shirts (one came with ruffles), tracksuits, some seriously gaudily embroidered, but mostly packaged as country chic. One shaggy, presumably faux fur coat would be desired by music moguls or P Diddy. For someone who was only into his second PFW collection, he was fiercely headlining.

And he really was: A day before the LV show, Nigo, probably taking a break from duties at Kenzo, announced that Mr Williams would be the “official advisor” to the former’s streetwear brand Human Made. And to make sure that the news is known among “LVers”, Mr Williams, who has an investor’s stake in the brand, took the by-now-characteristically-long, end-of-show bow in a white Human Made T-shirt, with a message on the back that read: “Gears for futuristic teenagers”. They should plaster that catchphrase on the LV clothes alongside the LV logo that appeared on practically every garment showcased, except that ‘futuristic’ could be replaced with ‘hillbilly’. The real talent in fashion these days is in how good you are at placing logos and brand names on everything. Pharrell Williams has, evidently, a flair for that.

Screen shot (top): louisvuitton/YouTube. Photos: Louis Vuitton