Pharrell Williams brings India and Beyoncé to Louis Vuitton's Pompidou runway
The birds scattered in every direction as the first drumbeat thundered across the plaza outside Paris' Pompidou Center Tuesday, clearing the way for a different kind of flight: Beyoncé and Jay-Z swept into the front row.
American recording artists Beyonce and Jay-Z attend Louis Vuitton Menswear Spring/Summer 2026 collection show in Paris, France.Reuters
The star couple anchored a guest list at Pharrell Williams' latest Louis Vuitton spectacle that doubled as a map of contemporary culture now: Bradley Cooper, J-Hope, Karol G, Pinkpanthress, Future, Pusha T, Jackson Wang, Bambam, Mason Thames, Miles Caton, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Malcolm Washington, Jalen Ramsey, and A$AP Nast. If there was any question about the gravitational pull of Louis Vuitton under Williams, it evaporated before the first look hit the runway.
This was no ordinary catwalk: Williams - half showman, half pop impresario - staged a cultural passage from Paris to Mumbai, fusing Indian tradition and modern dandyism into a punchy, sunstruck vision of the Vuitton man in 2026.
Models wear creations as part of the men's Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2026 collection, in Paris. AP
In Vuitton's world, a show is never just a show. It's a takeover, a mood. On Tuesday, the Pompidou's iconic colored pipes served as a sci-fi backdrop for a set dreamed up with Studio Mumbai architect Bijoy Jain: a lifesize "Snakes and Ladders" board, alluding to both the child's game and the adult risks of fashion's global game. For Williams, the house's mantra of travel is less about destination, more about movement. Up, down, sideways, sunward.
The clothes? This season, they marched to their own drumbeat. Out came models in Indian-style chunky sandals, striped boxy shorts and blue preppy shirts with sleeves billowing like monsoon sails. Silken cargo pants shimmered in the sun; pin-striped puffers added a louche, almost Bollywood-kitsch edge. Cricket jerseys appeared with jeweled collars or - why not? - a puffy hood dripping with rhinestones. Blue pearlescent leather bombers flirted with the bling of Mumbai's film sets, while pin-striped tailoring riffed on both the British Raj and Parisian boulevardiers.
A model presents a creation by designer and musician Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton during Men's Fashion Week in Paris, France. Reuters
If all this felt like cultural collision, that's by design. Williams' Vuitton has become a mood board for global wanderlust: the checked silks, the mismatched stripes, the trompe l'oeil fabrics that look sun-faded by actual adventures. It's a nod to the itinerant dandyism that's fast becoming his Vuitton calling card. Less about nostalgia, more about now.
But don't mistake the globe-trotting optimism for naivety. There's calculation in the chaos. Williams' references bounce from Kenzo 's Nigo (his onetime collaborator) to Indian contemporary artisans - like the hand-beaded snakes slithering across shirts, or the sandalwood-scented linens that recall a summer in Rajasthan. The "worldwide community" Vuitton preaches is real, but it's also realpolitik: What could be more luxurious in 2025 than clothing that tries to please everyone and everywhere, without losing itself?
Of course, with Vuitton, the accessories make the man and this season's bags, bejeweled sandals and hardware-heavy necklaces delivered the requisite Instagram bait, each a covetable passport stamp in leather or gold. It's maximalism, sure, but not just for the TikTok set: the craftsmanship, from sun-bleached cloth to hand-loomed stripes, rewards anyone who bothers to look twice.
If there's a criticism, it's that sometimes the noise of references threatens to drown out the signal. Williams piles motif on motif, color on color, joy on joy, until coherence blurs into sheer, Dionysian energy. But maybe that's the point: In a season of global anxiety the Vuitton man chooses to strut, sparkle, and swerve.
Designer and musician Pharrell Williams appears at the end of his Menswear Spring/Summer 2026 collection show for fashion house Louis Vuitton. Reuters
LVMH, the world's largest luxury group, posted record revenue of 84.7 billion euros in 2024, with its Fashion & Leather Goods division anchored by Louis Vuitton still leading the pack. With a market value near $455 billion and over 6,300 stores worldwide, Vuitton remains the world's most valuable luxury brand. Even with a recent dip in sales, its scale and influence are unmatched.
As the last look circled the Pompidou and the birds resettled, Vuitton's odyssey felt less like a fashion show and more like an announcement: the world is a game board, the ladders are real, and Louis Vuitton is still rolling the dice.
Associated Press
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gulf Today
2 hours ago
- Gulf Today
Volunteers use the universal language of music to soothe stressed shelter animals
It's often said music is the universal language of humanity. Now a 12-year-old Houston boy is putting that to the test among an unlikely audience - man's best friend. Yuvi Agarwal started playing keyboard when he was 4 and several years ago noticed his playing soothed his family's restless golden doodle, Bozo. He grew curious if it also could help stressed homeless animals. With help from his parents, who both have backgrounds in marketing, he founded the nonprofit Wild Tunes in 2023 to recruit musicians to play in animal shelters. So far he has enlisted about 100 volunteer musicians and singers of all ages and abilities to perform at nine shelters in Houston, New Jersey and Denver."You don't have to understand the lyrics to enjoy the music. Just enjoy the melody, the harmony and the rhythms. So it transcends linguistic barriers, and even it can just transcend species," Agarwal said recently after playing hits like The Beatles' "Hey Jude" and Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" on his portable keyboard at the Denver Animal Shelter. Yuvi Agarwal, the founder of Wild Tunes, plays the keyboard at the Denver Animal Shelter. AP Agarwal, who was playing for an elderly miniature poodle named Pituca - Spanish slang sometimes used to describe a snob - said many of his four-legged listeners, which include cats, become excited when he enters their kennel. But after a few minutes of playing, they calm down. Some even go to sleep. He remembers a rescue dog named Penelope that refused to come out of her enclosure in Houston to be fed."Within a short period of me playing, she went from not even coming out of her kennel to licking me all over my face and nibbling my ears," Agarwal said. A few stalls down from where he was jamming on his keyboard at the Denver shelter, volunteer Sarah McDonner played Mozart and Bach on her flute for Max, a 1-year-old stray boxer that tilted his head when she hit the high notes. "The animals having that human interaction in a positive way, I think, gives them something to look forward to, something that is different throughout their day," said McDonner, a professional musician who met Argawal in Houston. She helped bring the program to Colorado after moving to Denver a few months ago. "I think it's very important to give them something different from what they're used to in their little tiny cages ... and makes them more adoptable in the long run," McDonner said. Sarah McDonner, a volunteer for Wild Tunes, which aims to soothe stressed shelter animals with live music, plays the flute. AP While the effect of music on humans has been studied extensively, its role in animal behavior remains studies suggest that classical music generally has a calming influence on dogs in stressful environments like kennels, shelters and veterinary clinics. But some researchers warn there is not enough data to support the claim."We always want these really simplistic answers. So we want to say that music calms animals, for example, and I think that it's much more nuanced than that," said Lori Kogan, a self-described "dog-person" who chairs the human-animal interaction section of the American Psychological Association. "There's a lot more research that needs to happen before I think that we can unequivocally say that music is a great thing for animals."Kogan, a professor and researcher at Colorado State University, has studied for more than two decades how animals and humans get along. Research involving the effect of music on dogs often produces mixed results, she said, because there are so many variables: the setting; the volume, type and tempo of the music and the breed of the dog and its previous exposure to music. She suggests a case-by-case approach to introducing music to animals. "If you play music for your pet, and they seem to like it and they appear calmer, then I think we can say that that's a positive thing, that you're providing some level of enrichment for that pet. ... I would encourage people to give it a try and to see how their pets respond," she Agarwal, his firsthand experience at shelters is undeniable evidence that music helps comfort stressed animals, and he plans to grow Wild Tunes into a nationwide program. The volunteers get something out of it, too, he said."You get a really great way to practice your instrument or sing in front of a nonjudgmental audience, which can boost your confidence," he said. Associated Press
Web Release
3 hours ago
- Web Release
Beyoncé Shines in Messika at the Louis Vuitton SS26 Fashion Show
Beyoncé Shines in Messika at the Louis Vuitton SS26 Fashion Show Global Icon Beyoncé attended the Louis Vuitton Menswear Spring/Summer 2026 Fashion Show in Paris, wearing a show-stopping Messika necklace. The singer selected the Fragment of Time necklace from the Midnight Sun High Jewelry collection, showcasing a 34-carat cushion-cut white diamond paired with a 36-carat cushion-cut yellow diamond.
Gulf Today
5 hours ago
- Gulf Today
Pharrell Williams brings India and Beyoncé to Louis Vuitton's Pompidou runway
The birds scattered in every direction as the first drumbeat thundered across the plaza outside Paris' Pompidou Center Tuesday, clearing the way for a different kind of flight: Beyoncé and Jay-Z swept into the front row. American recording artists Beyonce and Jay-Z attend Louis Vuitton Menswear Spring/Summer 2026 collection show in Paris, The star couple anchored a guest list at Pharrell Williams' latest Louis Vuitton spectacle that doubled as a map of contemporary culture now: Bradley Cooper, J-Hope, Karol G, Pinkpanthress, Future, Pusha T, Jackson Wang, Bambam, Mason Thames, Miles Caton, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Malcolm Washington, Jalen Ramsey, and A$AP Nast. If there was any question about the gravitational pull of Louis Vuitton under Williams, it evaporated before the first look hit the runway. This was no ordinary catwalk: Williams - half showman, half pop impresario - staged a cultural passage from Paris to Mumbai, fusing Indian tradition and modern dandyism into a punchy, sunstruck vision of the Vuitton man in 2026. Models wear creations as part of the men's Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2026 collection, in Paris. AP In Vuitton's world, a show is never just a show. It's a takeover, a mood. On Tuesday, the Pompidou's iconic colored pipes served as a sci-fi backdrop for a set dreamed up with Studio Mumbai architect Bijoy Jain: a lifesize "Snakes and Ladders" board, alluding to both the child's game and the adult risks of fashion's global game. For Williams, the house's mantra of travel is less about destination, more about movement. Up, down, sideways, sunward. The clothes? This season, they marched to their own drumbeat. Out came models in Indian-style chunky sandals, striped boxy shorts and blue preppy shirts with sleeves billowing like monsoon sails. Silken cargo pants shimmered in the sun; pin-striped puffers added a louche, almost Bollywood-kitsch edge. Cricket jerseys appeared with jeweled collars or - why not? - a puffy hood dripping with rhinestones. Blue pearlescent leather bombers flirted with the bling of Mumbai's film sets, while pin-striped tailoring riffed on both the British Raj and Parisian boulevardiers. A model presents a creation by designer and musician Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton during Men's Fashion Week in Paris, France. Reuters If all this felt like cultural collision, that's by design. Williams' Vuitton has become a mood board for global wanderlust: the checked silks, the mismatched stripes, the trompe l'oeil fabrics that look sun-faded by actual adventures. It's a nod to the itinerant dandyism that's fast becoming his Vuitton calling card. Less about nostalgia, more about now. But don't mistake the globe-trotting optimism for naivety. There's calculation in the chaos. Williams' references bounce from Kenzo 's Nigo (his onetime collaborator) to Indian contemporary artisans - like the hand-beaded snakes slithering across shirts, or the sandalwood-scented linens that recall a summer in Rajasthan. The "worldwide community" Vuitton preaches is real, but it's also realpolitik: What could be more luxurious in 2025 than clothing that tries to please everyone and everywhere, without losing itself? Of course, with Vuitton, the accessories make the man and this season's bags, bejeweled sandals and hardware-heavy necklaces delivered the requisite Instagram bait, each a covetable passport stamp in leather or gold. It's maximalism, sure, but not just for the TikTok set: the craftsmanship, from sun-bleached cloth to hand-loomed stripes, rewards anyone who bothers to look twice. If there's a criticism, it's that sometimes the noise of references threatens to drown out the signal. Williams piles motif on motif, color on color, joy on joy, until coherence blurs into sheer, Dionysian energy. But maybe that's the point: In a season of global anxiety the Vuitton man chooses to strut, sparkle, and swerve. Designer and musician Pharrell Williams appears at the end of his Menswear Spring/Summer 2026 collection show for fashion house Louis Vuitton. Reuters LVMH, the world's largest luxury group, posted record revenue of 84.7 billion euros in 2024, with its Fashion & Leather Goods division anchored by Louis Vuitton still leading the pack. With a market value near $455 billion and over 6,300 stores worldwide, Vuitton remains the world's most valuable luxury brand. Even with a recent dip in sales, its scale and influence are unmatched. As the last look circled the Pompidou and the birds resettled, Vuitton's odyssey felt less like a fashion show and more like an announcement: the world is a game board, the ladders are real, and Louis Vuitton is still rolling the dice. Associated Press
