Pharrell and Nigo’s Louis Vuitton falls flat

A streetwear influencer, a businessman catching a flight and a construction worker walk into a bar. Except they’re all one guy. And somehow, he’s also none of these guys. But he has a Pinterest board full of these guys. This isn’t a weird setup for a joke — this is who Louis Vuitton’s ideal customer is. Apparently. 

When Louis Vuitton offered the position of men’s creative director to Pharrell Williams following the passing of Virgil Abloh, my hopes were more than high. Pharrell is no stranger to creating a brand image — his previous projects, including Billionaire Boys Club and Humanrace, are proof he knows how to build iconic formulas and stick to them. Now that Pharrell has spent a year in the position, however, the Louis Vuitton Fall-Winter 2025 collection that debuted at Paris Fashion Week casts doubt that this legacy will continue under the luxury fashion house.

The looks presented from this collection were highly detailed, yet full of nothing substantial. Their overarching theme seemed to be “streetwear and workwear, but also tailored,” which was an interesting contrast when figures like Pharrell pioneered it twenty-something years ago. Each piece — whether a utility vest, bomber jacket or a pair of oversized jorts — felt fished out of a bucket of overused designs, hastily repurposed and recycled for this collection. Think a funky conglomeration of Pharrell’s past work, melded together in an attempt to recapture Abloh’s edge. The only thing that signals “this is Louis Vuitton” is the classic logo-covered luggage and the brown leather that oversaturates nearly the entire line. This collection doesn’t know if it wants to be revolutionary or classic, and it hits none of those marks in the awkward in-between. 

Much of the collection borrows from streetwear in a way that feels less like a graceful nod and more along the lines of cheap imitation. A bright, pixelated camouflage pattern and leopard print denim make frequent appearances in the line, unfortunately, as they look like they could have been taken from a discard pile at the Golf Wang factory. The utility vests stamped with the LV logo and knit beanies feel too close to a Supreme drop of yesteryear that Grailed users would bid on and hang on their walls.

Nigo, Pharrell’s collaborator for the collection and the founder of famous clothing brand A Bathing Ape (also known as Bape), is a creative powerhouse, recently dabbling in everything from fashion to music. And perhaps that’s the issue. When creatives have already made a name for themselves, it can be difficult to freshly transition to something else. Or, instead of even attempting the transition, they get so confident in their past work that they think whatever they put out will be received well. 

That’s exactly what happened in their oversight of these designs — the collection feels like Pharrell and Nigo are taking a victory lap, and while they might make more sense in that context, the lap is not theirs to take when it comes to this brand. Creating something outside of Pharrell and Nigo’s wheelhouse that is uniquely Louis Vuitton could be an exciting avenue, but right now it feels like they’re simply out of steam, relying on old discoveries that can’t satiate a new endeavor. 

The issues with this collection aren’t innate to the inclusion of different styles like streetwear and workwear. There are countless examples of these kinds of styles working their way into high fashion, revolutionizing what had been previously known on the runway. The iterations here were just stale — and nothing audiences of Pharrell and Louis Vuitton haven’t seen before. 

Senior Arts Editor Cecilia Dore can be reached at cecedore@umich.edu.

Related articles

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}