Pharrell's Rise in Fashion
Examining how Pharrell Williams leveraged his cultural cachet to make a significant and lasting impact on contemporary style
Pharrell Williams has given us so much timeless music throughout his career. He’s been a producer for people like Justin Timberlake and Brittney Spears, has been on tracks with Jay-Z and Rihanna, and even his solo projects have been hit after hit. But how did he go from one of the world’s most talented producers to becoming the creative director at one of the fashion industry’s most admired luxury houses? A lot of hard work, a keen eye for what looks good, and a little serendipity.
Pharrell entered the fashion world by starting a brand called Billionaire Boys Club (BBC) with his friend Nigo. You may or may not have heard his name before, but Nigo was one of the co-founders of the popular streetwear brand A Bathing Ape (BAPE for short). At the time Nigo was a huge fan of Pharrell’s style and was always asking Jacob The Jeweler, one of hip-hop’s biggest jewelry influences, to model his chains after the ones Pharrell wore. These large, extravagant chains were popular in the 80’s but came back into style heavily in the early 2000s. Pharrell got wind of Nigo’s consistent requests and was interested in meeting him. While Pharrell was traveling in Tokyo, Nigo offered to let him use his music studio. Within a short period of time, the two hit it off and decided to start BBC together in 2003. Pharrell began wearing both BAPE and BBC when he was near the paparazzi, in music videos, during TV appearances, etc., allowing the former to find a huge American audience including The Notorious B.I.G., while also growing the hype around the latter. Billionaire Boys Club wasn’t readily available to the masses yet, so every time people would see him wear anything with the logo on it, it swelled even more in popularity.
The year after Pharrell launched BBC would be a foreshadowing into his future. He and Nigo collaborated with Louis Vuitton while Marc Jacobs was the creative director to create the Millionaire sunglass line. This line was only a limited run of about 200 pieces but would be brought back in a major way once Virgil Abloh began working there. Pharrell would partner with L.V. four years later in 2008 on their jewelry line. In partnership with Camille Miceli, the brand’s in-house jewelry designer at the time, they created a range of items including “a cherub ring with a gem clutched between tiny fingers, a three-foot-long necklace of diamond crowns and crests and ‘secret society’ rings and bracelets featuring an LV-logo emblem that flips over to plain pavé.1” These all ranged in price from $2k-$600k+. Jewelry was an area Pharrell loved to dabble in. In the picture above he’s wearing a chain he had commissioned. With a pendant representative of the members of N.E.R.D, the group he was part of when his music started becoming mainstream, the chain was 14 karat three-tone gold piece and adorned with various gemstones and colorful diamonds.
Though there was an incredible amount of demand for Billionaire Boys Club over the years, they were still running into issues with high production costs. This is also around the time that Nigo’s brand was exploding and they both saw a need for change. Nigo decided to step away and focus solely on BAPE, and Pharrell brought in Jay-Z as his new business partner. In 2011 Jay sold his clothing brand Rocawear to brand management firm Iconix for ~$200M, a signal that there was a lot of value in rappers building hype around their fashion brands. This was on the heels of other artists who had already seen commercial success with their own brands (Nelly had Apple Bottom, Diddy had Sean John, etc). Iconix was also brought into the BBC universe and they went onto purchase a 50% stake in the brand. The changes they were able to make, especially shifting production from Japan to China and Pakistan, allowed them to invest in other areas of the business, and they saw their top line revenue more than double. Eventually Pharrell decided to step away and work on other ventures, but he would come back in 2016 to repurchase the brand from Iconix and retake creative control.
After his first departure from BBC, Pharrell was getting bombarded with requests from different fashion houses given that his influence at the intersection of music and fashion was almost unrivaled. In 2013 he partnered with Moncler to work on a sunglasses line. When asked about working with Pharrell in an interview, Moncler’s CEO says “He represents the very best of all that is contemporary, creative and international, the same characteristics that underpin the entire Moncler project and the Moncler Lunettes collection.2” A year later he would become a brand ambassador for Chanel, showing that he was the actual first hip hop influence for the brand more than a decade before the recent announcement of Kendrick Lamar taking on that same role. This allowed him to create a menswear capsule right before the passing of Chanel’s then creative director Karl Lagerfeld, a man who genuinely believed in Pharrell’s artistic vision and direction. Pharrell was also working with Adidas to release his own version of the popular NMD sneaker, with various word combinations for each foot. While some of these retailed for $240, limited editions like the pair seen below would fetch for upwards of $10k on the resale market.
After Virgil Abloh’s passing in 2021, the Men’s Creative Director seat at Louis Vuitton stayed vacant for nearly a year and a half. On, February 14, 2023, the company announced that Pharrell would assume this role. This was one of the first major moves that Pietro Beccari made as the newly appointed CEO. This choice was met with tons of criticism because even though Pharrell had clearly made his mark on the fashion world and had a unique understanding of design, he hadn’t taken the “traditional” route of studying fashion in school, working under the top designers in the industry, and also didn’t have a background in actually making garments himself. But Donatella Versace never learned how to sew and look at how her career blossomed. While his fashion shows still receive a level criticism every summer and winter, no one can deny the impact he’s made on plenty of brands over the years and the industry as a whole. In his latest runway show this past February, he debuted a few pieces with characters of himself and Nigo as an ode to their friendship over the years. Pharrell’s thoughtfulness and love for the people around him consistently shine through in his work, and I look forward to seeing what he continues to do at Louis Vuitton and beyond.
Women’s Wear Daily; Pharrell Williams to Unveil Louis Vuitton Jewelry Line by Miles Socha
Luoxo; Pharrell Williams x Moncler Sunglasses Collection
While not specifically quoted, a big thank you to Threaducation for some interesting tidbits on Pharrell’s timeline in the fashion world