Louis Vuitton's spaghetti-western Pharrell signs a vivid, pop and easily consumable collection
Why use, in the title, the phrase "spaghetti-western" to define Pharrell's latest effort for Louis Vuitton? Because the name defines those films set in the American West but produced in Europe, just like the pieces in this collection manufactured between France and Italy, with the only difference being that those films were created to shatter the reassuring myth of the Wild West put forth by Hollywood and tell the ugly, dirty, bad side of that era. What Pharrell did instead was to try to rewrite or overwrite that myth, reappropriating an imagery that, viewed in retrospect, is quite colonialist and racist: in classic Westerns, in fact, as well as in historical reality, cowboys and Native Americans were enemies, one invading the territory of the other, initiating a very difficult process of integration that is still far from being resolved today. In order to redeem the cowboy persona and be able to take the liberty of remixing their styles without offending anyone's sensibilities, Pharrell entrusted the creation of accessories, soundtrack and set design for the show to several Native American creatives continuing that tradition of collaboration that Virgil Abloh had already started years ago. The choice made the collection a dense and vital blockbuster, rich in detail but also easily edible for an audience to dazzle as much with the magnificence and luxury of the most minute details (the turquoise details created by Dakota and Lakota artisans are particularly beautiful) as with the relative accessibility of the silhouettes they found in the workwear and vibrant rodeo tailoring.
The American imaginary according to Pharrell
Another macro-trend traceable in the show are the return of men's furs, featured here in several iterations. Why do we say this is important? Because one of the looks, the one that not coincidentally featured the longest and most opulent fur coat in the entire collection, was worn by Will Lemay, iconic Y2K supermodel whose most absolutely memorable look was precisely a fur coat worn with nothing underneath and seen in Sean John's FW01 collection, aka Sean Combs' brand, aka P. Diddy, who is another music mogul presented in fashion, twenty years ahead of Pharrell. A really fine quote that must have been placed there not only as a viral throwback but also to bring attention back to the importance that men's furs have had in hip-hop iconography but also to the absolute popularity they have had this season and probably will have next.
