Today, Explained - Pharrell Vuitton

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Pharrell Williams was happy to be named the new head of Louis Vuitton’s menswear, but his appointment had fashion industry hopefuls feeling like they never get lucky. Nick Kostov and Jacob Gallagher from the Wall Street Journal explain their scoop. This episode was produced by Siona Peterous, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some musicians are so big, they only need one name. Madonna, Prince, Beyonce, Shakira, Rihanna, Adele, and Pharrell. Pharrell might be the smallest of those big names I just mentioned, but he's arguably played the biggest role out of all of them in shaping popular music over the last quarter century. He was the guy behind this. And this. And this. And this.

And this. And this. And of course this. But also this. But now Pharrell's going to try and conquer an entirely different industry. He's going to be one of the top guys at the biggest luxury fashion house in the world. That story from the two guys who broke the news is coming up on Today Explained. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever.

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Last week, the Wall Street Journal shocked two worlds at once with one scoop. Pharrell Williams has been hired by Louis Vuitton to be their menswear creative director. Nick Kostov, based in Paris, was one of the very fashionable dudes behind the scoop. Suddenly here we have like a multidisciplinary artist who, you know, obviously is known for his work in music. Beautiful, I just want you to know, You're my favorite girl Taking over one of the major, major kind of luxury and fashion names in Europe. Lots of reaction, lots of people very, very positive,

very excited about this. Also some maybe more traditionalist people saying, well, what about, you know, the kind of pure designers and should they not be at the top of a house like Louis Vuitton creating the collection. So it's got lots of people talking, lots of reaction. And I think that is probably can only be a good thing You said a major, major fashion house, a major, major company. Tell us how major Louis V is and the company it belongs to. Louis V is the biggest luxury company in the world by sales. It did more than $20 billion in sales last year, which is huge,

doubled in four years. And you know, there was always a question of how big can you get? Because obviously, these luxury companies, these fashion houses play a lot on exclusivity. That's part of how they keep prices high. How big can you get before you lose this exclusivity? Louis Vuitton is showing that it can become very, very, very big and still be very exclusive. The conglomerate that they belong to, which is called LVMH, is now Europe's largest company. It's seen incredible growth in recent years. Despite the inflationary pressures, LVMH, which owns luxury brands including Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, posted strong third quarter sales. Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, posted strong third quarter sales.

Louis Vuitton is the biggest brand, but there are others, which I'm sure lots of people will have heard of. The second biggest brand, for example, is Dior. But the conglomerate spans, you know, it has Hennessy Cognac, it has Champagne, it has many other fashion houses like Loewe, Celine. It has hotels. They own luxury. And, you know, they're run now by the world's richest man, Bernard Arnault, who is the CEO and chairman and controlling shareholder.

This man rubbing shoulders with the likes of Natalie Portman, Paul McCartney and Rihanna is French business mogul Bernard Arnault. Luxury for me is how can you create desire? Arnault is the world's richest person with a net worth of $191 billion at the start of 2023. And yes, they're very big. It sounds like the wealthiest man in the world can take a chance on someone like Pharrell Williams.

But it also sounds like there's a lot at stake here. Asking a guy who may drop it like it's hot to be in charge of their brand. What did they say about this decision when they announced it? So I think the first thing to say is that Louis Vuitton describes himself as a cultural brand, more than a fashion brand. And so it has to tap into culture, tap into art, try and find the next cool thing i think the second thing to say is that there's a bit of a misconception in the luxury industry that luxury is simply based on heritage and tradition and i think if that was

the case a lot of these brands that are now in museums and we don't talk about would still be around and what we've really seen in recent years is that it's also just hugely about innovation and that these are the brands that are being the most successful. And if you stand still, you will die. People will get bored. And so this is what Louis Vuitton has done very, very successfully in recent years. They've grown sales massively, but they are taking risks. They are taking risks. And for now, these risks are paying off. And this, you know, this many people will see it as another risk. Most people think of purses and maybe suitcases when they think of Louis Vuitton. But what are they hiring Pharrell to do? What exactly will he be in charge of? So still, to this day, I mean, much of Louis Vuitton's profit, much of their sales comes from handbags, you know, suitcases, leather goods in general, which is historically what the company has done. I think what they use menswear for, and menswear is a small percentage of their revenue, but what they use it for is to infuse the brand with that newness that Pharrell will be able to bring,

and to make it cool, and to make it hype, and to make it desirable. What they're trying to do is create desire. And so I think that's what he'll be coming in to do. And that's also what Louis Vuitton has done very well with menswear in general. As I said, it's a small percentage of their sales, a small percentage of their profit, but they get huge visibility. And then when people buy this small leather good,

the small Louis Vuitton wallet, let's say, for the aspirational customers or whatever for the first time, they're actually buying into this incredibly exclusive universe that has all the best artists, all the best musicians, all the best celebrities. First of all, I love the suits. The suits are so classic.

Louis Vuitton. Clean. They have been very experimental. And it started really with Marc Jacobs. I think it's good to not have too many, or to not have rules, and just enjoy what it is that you choose to wear, or what fashion means. He was the designer at Louis Vuitton, and he did various collaborations, one of which was with Kanye West, actually, but also with other artists.

And then in 2017, they did this collaboration with Supreme, which is this kind of cult streetwear skateboarding brand and which people at the time thought was impossible that Louis Vuitton, this kind of like super exclusive luxury French brand, you know, from 1854 would do this collaboration with Supreme. All right, so before I start unboxing all these, all the boxes, I just want to give you a little backstory about this release. It's been one of the hardest and most frustrating releases to get. And that kind of flew off the shelf and it started this kind of new era in

fashion. Then the following year, they hired Virgil Abloh. Kanye and myself have been friends for 14 years now. We've always been driven by fashion. We've always been the kids. Fergiablo was extremely effective at, you know, broadening the consumer base for Louis Vuitton. It created a lot of hype. He was another guy who was multidisciplinary. So I'd studied engineering, then got a master's degree in architecture. And I explained to people, it's like how the world works in a way.

It's like an analytical thinking, like how do you make a building stand up? But then there's the yin-yang part of it. It's like, what does the building look like and what does it do? How does it perform? Why is it relevant? So it's analytical plus like aesthetic. And I use that in fashion design or in my art practice. He was a DJ, he was an architect, he was an artist in general. And what he did very, very well was just broadened the base of consumers who were interested in Louis Vuitton.

He never lost touch with, you know, those people who, those aspirational consumers who want to buy their first, who kind of want to make that quote unquote Louis Vuitton money, right? And then go and buy like their first leather good or their first piece of Louis Vuitton. And so I think that's what he did very well. He bought many new people to that brand who then stayed loyal. When we say that they've doubled sales within four years, they're the biggest luxury brand in the world. I think Virgil Abloh does have his share of credit to take for that. Abloh's impact clear as tribute after tribute from stars of fashion, music, sports and Hollywood pour in. Pharrell Williams writing, my heart is broken. And he dies in November 2021 of cancer. Does Virgil Abloh sort of pave the way for someone like Pharrell to be chosen as his successor?

Yeah, I think so. I think, first of all, the two were close. And then secondly, unanimously, people say that Virgil Abloh was a success. And again, this is another risk which Louis Vuitton took. There was a lot of criticism when they hired someone like Virgil Abloh, who again, was not your typical designer. I think also what we've had is an interim period where they've had nobody at the head of Louis Vuitton menswear for like a year and a half. And they've been working off like old designs that Virgil Abloh made. But also it shows that there is a team of designers

that will be below Pharrell Williams working under him. And I think that's important for people to understand how fashion works. Pharrell Williams will set the general direction, but these guys, they came out again in the last fashion show and they took a bow and there's hundreds who are working at Louis Vuitton. And so you can have somebody who's almost like a figurehead, right? Or a godhead that sets the general direction, and you've got all these other people who work to actually make the collection. But you said Virgil Abloh was a sort of inarguable success, but you also mentioned that there's still a lot of hesitancy around Pharrell's appointment. Why is it that people still can't see someone like Pharrell in this role? I think there are traditionalists who think that somebody who heads a fashion house should be

a designer, should have formal training as a designer, should be able to cut, you know, cloth. And Pharrell Williams, whilst he has a lot of experience in the fashion industry, and he started, you know, a couple of brands brands of his own has no formal training as a clothes designer right and lots of the other names that have been uh mentioned as being in the running in recent months were these kind of more i guess typical pure designers who maybe some people felt were doing great work at smaller brands and should be given their chance at a huge you know behemoth like Louis Vuitton as I said it's split there's also some people who are incredibly excited at where the industry is going and we think that this is a great appointment and the other thing to say just quickly is is LVMH, the empire to which

Louis Vuitton belongs, it's so big and there are so many fashion brands that many of their fashion brands do have a more traditional designer at the head of it including, by the way, Louis Vuitton women's wear. Just to say that it depends what you're trying to achieve. Whether you go

for someone who's a much more traditional designer or whether you go for a multidisciplinary like Pharrell Williams. And obviously on the menswear side of Louis Vuitton, Louis Vuitton has looked at it and decided this is what we're about. And this will bring us what we need right now. That was Nick Kostov, who broke the story about Pharrell taking over menswear at Louis V. in the Wall Street Journal. In a minute, Nick's colleague with whom he broke the story on the ever-increasing influence of celebrities in fashion.

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Hearths. Today, Explain is back. Nick is not, but his colleague Jacob Gallagher is. And he's here to talk about celebrities in fashion. Pharrell is not the first. There have been a bunch in recent years. But primarily on the women's side. So what we have seen in the past, I would say, you know, two decades or so is you have people like Victoria Beckham starting a brand and finding legitimacy with that. To celebrate 10 years of her brand, Victoria Beckham made her London Fashion Week debut

showcasing her spring-summer 2019 collection. That brand still endures today under her name. You have people like, frankly, the Olsen twins who left behind being child stars and started The Row. You got it, dude. Which is, you know, this kind of luxury, Upper East Side, corporate ice queen look that a lot of wealthy women really gravitate toward. There's also epic flame outs.

There's Lindsay Lohan designing for Ungaro. The recent decision to hire actress and tabloid queen Lindsay Lohan as the artistic director of an established Parisian fashion house came as something of a shock to most people in the fashion industry. A lot of listeners probably won't remember that because it was this much mocked blip for the brand and she was promptly fired. And of course, you know, we can't have this conversation without mentioning Kanye West, now known as Ye, who made several runs at the runway over the years, often with the backing of Adidas. And he, you know, there were times where he really did find legitimacy and where what he was doing was looked times where he really did find legitimacy and where what he was doing was looked at as being really influential, but then it would kind of fizzle and drop out.

And obviously his runway show in Paris not that long ago was kind of the beginning of the downfall for him of late. Another day, another Kanye West controversy. This time over shirts sporting the phrase, quote, white lives matter. I think that, though, it's also important just contextually to note that a lot of designers through their time making clothing have become what we would call mainstream celebrities. You know, Karl Lagerfeld comes to mind, someone who appeared in movies, lent his voice to the Grand Theft Auto video games.

Good morning, Liberty City. I slept in a cocoon. You too? This morning reminds me of Monte Carlo. Ralph Lauren appears on Friends. Hi, Ralph. Hi, Kim. Martin Scorsese makes a documentary about Giorgio Armani. And being a celebrity, being a public figure, is kind of part and parcel with being a creative director these days. I think I get why some of the biggest designers in the world

eventually become celebrities. But I'm curious what the success rate, in your view, is of the celebrities becoming designers, from Victoria Beckham to the Olsen twins to Lindsay Lohan. I didn't even know about that one to maybe Kanye West or or certainly Robin Fenty. Rihanna is worth mentioning in this conversation because Rihanna has a partnership or has a contract rather with LVMH, which is the corporate conglomerate that Louis Vuitton is under. Fenty Beauty, as we understand, is a successful endeavor.

But there was a Fenty Apparel line that fizzled after two years. Hi, Vogue. It's Rihanna. And welcome to Paris. Today, I'm going to be showing you some pieces from my new collection with Fenty. So that's all to say that full-fledged brands that are designed by celebrities, I think the success rate is fairly low. So that's all to say that full-fledged brands that are designed by celebrities, I think the success rate is fairly low. The celebrity working with the fashion brand, we often see that happen as a collaboration,

which our understanding of the vast majority of those is that perhaps not even the celebrity, someone from their creative team maybe just kind of goes in at the very end and goes, that, that, I like that, I don't like that, that's cool, I'd wear that, that's cool, make that, you know, put that in purple and put it in the line. And those partnerships are lucrative on both ends, but they're not necessarily enduring. And they certainly, you know, kind of to the public, it can be hard to keep up with them. They happen so frequently, it can be hard to say, ex-Fashion Nova collection is making me more excited than ex-H&M collection. Louis Vuitton could have partnered with Pharrell on a more temporary basis, as Chanel did, but they're clearly putting a lot of backing behind him, and they're putting a lot of confidence in

him by saying, no, this guy is our creative director. He signed the contract. We're ready to go with him. And however long that contract may be, however long his tenure might last for right now, they're clearly putting their support behind him. For people who best know Pharrell as like the guy who sings that happy song, which by the way, I hate, I hate it so much. Tell us about his, his background in fashion, other than he's consistently been a very stylish looking dude for like 25 years. I was going to say, so that is one part of it for sure, is that he is a very stylish guy. The other part of it is that, you know, for really almost exactly 20 years now, he has been running businesses and working with fashion brands, designing clothing.

Billionaire Boys Club, which he started with Nego, who's the Japanese designer behind A Bathing Ape, and who now is the creative director of Kenzo, which is also an LVMH brand, keeping it all in the family. Billionaire Boys Club was one of those early kind of pioneer streetwear brands, all over print hoodies that zipped all the way up, you know, shirts with rockets on them, a lot of skate influence. He had a skate shoe brand called Ice Cream that, you know, had neon colored shoes, shoes with diamonds and dollar bills on them. And, you know, there was this kind of, he identified that that was this market that was out there that people that perhaps listen to the music that he produced

would be into, and he really capitalized on it. But Pharrell also, it's important to note that he has this real, where Billionaire Boys Club, those t-shirts are, you know, comparatively affordable. This guy also has a real taste for luxury. Like Pharrell loves a luxury good. You know, there's photos of him holding Louis Vuitton luggage going back, you know, 20 years. Is that why his music festival in DC was so expensive last summer? Well, I think that every music festival is expensive to an extent, but yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, it was not that long ago that Pharrell did a collaboration with Chanel. You know, he and Karl Lagerfeld had this ongoing kind of creative dialogue.

Pharrell walked in Chanel collections. This is a new time. It's a new era. It's exciting. Let's see where it goes. I mean, those are really expensive clothes. You know, these are candy-colored loafers that are, you know, four and five figures. These clothes are expensive.

But I would say in terms of the luxury space, what people are looking at now as kind of the example of what Pharrell might be able to do or, you know, saying, well, he's done this before. He partnered with Marc Jacobs when Marc Jacobs was the creative director at Louis Vuitton on these millionaire sunglasses that, you know, to a certain fashion consumer, these are iconic. He's been through the doors of that atelier before. He seemingly, our understanding is, or our interpretation of that is, that he has a real understanding of how the design process works at these studios. He's not necessarily going in cold. And again, I think it just kind of goes to show that he's been working toward this for several decades and it's arrived for him.

Do you think he's got something to prove here? You make it sound like he's already proven everything he needs to prove. Well, he's always going to have something to prove. Fans of Virgil and consumers that were used to his look, I would say they're primed to like what Pharrell's going to do. But he certainly does have something to prove. There is not a world in whichll is going to do. But he certainly does have something to prove.

There is not a world in which he's going to get universal acclaim just because of who he is. People have a short memory in fashion. They might like you one season and dislike you the next. And consumers' tastes can turn really, really quickly. And I think that you could say that the pathway that Louis Vuitton is taking right now is a doubling down, a continuation. They're trying to really expand upon something that they have, this kind of kernel that they were left with after Virgil died, and they're trying to make it bigger now. So high fashion might get more and more accessible, but fat chance it gets any cheaper, huh? I was going to say accessible is relative. I think accessible has, you know, you have to parse out the definition of accessible at this point. Like, you know, I don't think it will ever get accessible in price. I mean, these companies are truly just raising their prices. That is what they do these days. And they, you know, luxury houses, speaking broadly, have been on the record saying, well, we're raising our prices because we can and

because that's what's happening across the market. But in terms of a look, you know, this prioritization of sneakers and T-shirts and, you know, sweaters and wide leg trousers, these things that are kind of more everyday items, so to speak, I think that that really is an indication they really want to occupy everyday real estate in someone's wardrobe. That was Jake Gallagher from the Wall Street Journal. Before him, you heard from his colleague, Nick Kostov. They're both very stylish, but in completely different ways, I noticed. You can read them at the Wall Street Journal. Our show today was produced by Siona Petros.

It was edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Paul Robert Mounsey. The show's called Today Explained. Outro Music stack up then disguise it as rap so the feds back up watch it like my whip like my chick top