The musician and Louis Vuitton’s new men’s creative director chats to Tatler about Joopiter and his upcoming visit to Hong Kong
Pharrell Williams is beyond happy. The artist and businessman is striding between recording and mixing rooms at a studio in Paris at 1.03am. One moment he’s recording a verse for his upcoming song, hitting a high note that most prepubescent boys would struggle to reach; the next, he’s in the adjacent room with rapper Kid Cudi, debating the merits of one song versus another and composing runs on a keyboard. The temperature in the studio is not much warmer than the Parisian winter outside, there is an entourage of half a dozen individuals around the singer, tapping away on laptops or aiming cameras and smartphones in his direction, but his whole world at the moment is just a one-metre radius from the keyboard. This is Pharrell in the throes of pure creation.
“I’m just a guy who likes to make things,” says the man who was just confirmed as Louis Vuitton’s new men’s creative director, taking over the role from the late and great Virgil Abloh. The brand’s new chairman and CEO, Pietro Beccari, lauded Pharrell’s “creative vision beyond fashion”; the first collection by him will already be out this June in time for men’s fashion week in Paris.
Pharrell has also created everything from chart-topping music hits to an equal-opportunity skincare and product brand to head-turning jewellery pieces. It is the latter in particular that will bring Pharrell to Hong Kong this month during Art Basel, as he launches A Journey Through Gems, his second auction on Joopiter, the digital-first auction house that he founded. Set for a scant five months after his first auction, Son of a Pharaoh, which reaped US$5.25million in sales and comprised the artist’s personal collectibles of both sentimental and monetary value, the second offering will show a different facet of Pharrell’s design skills.
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The auction will feature works by Lorraine Schwartz—the woman behind the blinding bling worn by Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, Angelina Jolie and a host of other Hollywood celebrities—which will consist of several high jewellery pieces that Pharrell commissioned and created with the legendary designer.
“Lorraine is very particular … and she’s been very generous with my education,” he says. He explains how Schwartz was instrumental in walking him through the more technical aspects of the jewellery industry, from working with stones to delving into ethical sourcing to understanding the craftsmanship that goes into each piece. “We’re both fire signs and we’re incredibly passionate. [When we] exchange ideas, it sometimes feels like this really peaceful, seamless thing; other times, there’s a difference of opinion, it feels a bit more like a tug of war,” he says. “But I think that’s what makes Lorraine’s work so different, and—no pun intended—it shines differently.”
For A Journey Through Gems, he co-designed a number of the lots with Schwartz, including a 26-carat Asscher-cut canary yellow diamond ring.
It’s a different project altogether compared to Son of a Pharaoh and the contrast between the two gives us an indication of Pharrell’s evolving relationship with material objects.