Pharrell Goes Global For Louis Vuitton Men's Spring/Summer 2025
Opening Paris Fashion Week, Pharrell put a contemporary, international spin on classic design philosophies from the luxury label for the Louis Vuitton Men's Spring/Summer 2025 collection.
For his third season at Louis Vuitton, creative director Pharrell Williams expands further on the menswear designs within the iconic luxury label's archives. As all great fashion shows do, the Louis Vuitton Men's Spring/Summer 2025 collection presentation began with a not-so-simple invitation. Opting for a new-age, digital design that exemplified the contemporary spirit captured within the collection, Louis Vuitton sent an array of actors, musicians, artists, models, fellow designers, editors, and buyers on an expedition to follow the compass, or rather, an Apple Air Tag—a sleek, 21st-century invitation perfectly befitting the collection's title, “Le Monde est à vous," or "The World Is Yours."
Ahead of the runway presentation, the brand elected to host the viewing for the Louis Vuitton Men's Spring/Summer 2025 collection at UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)—a United Nations agency that works to protect peace in the world, through international cooperation in the pertinent fields—Headquarters, located in the heart of Paris. The building, designed after the war and inaugurated in 1958, has remained a symbol of modern architecture over the years, marking the ideal destination to hold the contemporary-minded collection presentation.
For the Louis Vuitton Men's Spring/Summer 2025 collection, the creative director worked in close collaboration with the Air Afrique collective, a French cultural group started by the magazine of the same name whose objective is to celebrate the historical and cultural diversity of the African continent. In anticipation of this collection, Pharrell teased key themes and visual motifs of the fashion show several days before the day of the show online in a campaign that featured younger generations led by the writer and art critic Simon Njami, who said "universalism is the sum of all particularisms," quoting politician, poet, and philosopher Aimé Césaire. The creative director also teased notable new patterns from this collection, including the checkerboard tartan and several different travel-inspired logos.
At the Louis Vuitton Men's Spring/Summer 2025 fashion show, black silhouettes were on full display, boasting expertly-tailored, sharply constructed pieces close to the sartorial universe, in reference to the uniform of exceptional travelers, pilots, and diplomats often nicknamed "flying dandies" back in the expeditionary travel days. From afar, these garments appear smooth and monochrome, but in true Pharrell fashion, the real attention is to the details. Up close, these looks reveal a subtle work of reliefs and tones, most evident in Louis Vuitton's Monogram and Damoflage—the now-iconic Damier-camouflage hybrid motif—all of which are reminiscent of the nuances of the human body and of the surfaces of the skin, making this collection more personal than ever before.
In the new line of bags, the creative director presented a series of the Maison's great classics, previously made in canvas, but as with the rest of the looks, now dynamized in an ultra-soft leather version.
An original soundtrack set the tone for the unveiling of the globetrotting looks, made up of three songs produced by the creative director himself. “Triumphus Cosmos” by Pharrell Williams, "Birds Don't Sing” by Clipse featuring John Legend, and “Falling Up” by Adekunle Gold, Pharrell Williams, and Niles Rodgers were all performed by the Voices of Fire Choir and the Orchester du Pont Neuf, marking the memorable occasion with Pharrell's artistic vision on more than one account.