"It's Our Turn"

Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton Mens creative director, talks to Chioma Nnadi about the exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” and what it means for Black resiliency, possibility, and power.

- Chioma Nnadi

There's music in the air at Louis Vuitton’s menswear HQ in Paris. Swelling piano chords float along office hallways, buoying along a soulful, unmistakable falsetto—a voice that’s launched a thousand hits. “I stay in a flow state,’ says Pharrell Williams from his light-filled executive suite turned recording studio, pausing mid-song to swivel away from his piano keyboard. “It’s like when you get in a place of absolute disconnection with the exception of what you're focused on in your brain. It opens up a whole other world, and that world becomes a dimension unto itself.”

In the two-plus years since Williams was appointed Louis Vuitton’s creative director of menswear—only the second Black man to hold the position, after Virgil Abloh—he’s been mapping a new frontier for the storied French house, one filled with music, culture, and entertainment. Williams's contract was announced on Valentine's Day, auspicious timing that inspired his agenda-setting For Lovers debut collection in June 2023. Staged on the landmark Pont Neuf at sunset, backed by a gospel choir, and megastars in attendance—Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Zendaya, you name it—the show easily ranked as one of the biggest cultural moments the French capital has seen in a decade. Williams's office is filled with subdued Paris light, and his views onto that historic bridge, the oldest standing over the Seine, are impressive.