By Aaron Kok - published
Louis Vuitton’s spring/summer 2026 menswear show began with a board—an actual one spiralling across the plaza outside the Pompidou museum like a fashionable round of snakes and ladders in progress. Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai designed the set as a sprawling Damier-checked tableau, but Pharrell had no interest in playing by its rules. Instead, he turned it into a metaphor for his latest collection at the house: fashion not as a rat race, but as a slow, intentional climb that goes upward, outward, and even inward.
His focus this season was trained on the heritage of Louis Vuitton as a House so closely tied to the idea of travel. Show notes frame this season as a “sun-drenched dandyism” filtered through the lens of modern Indian sartorial codes; where cuts, cloths, and colour are conditioned by nature and city alike. In Williams’s hands, this translates to a wardrobe as lived-in as it is exalted.
What emerged was a tapestry of craftsmanship, where handwork met wanderlust in forms both intimate and expansive. Deep, grey-ish purple replaced black, as if calling to mind shadows that have been re-tinted by saffron light. Jackets looked kissed by heat—fabrics were brushed, sun-faded, and washed in hues that suggest both opulence and erosion. Tailoring softened into poetically slouchy shapes, layering vests and waistcoats over trousers in deliberately imperfect combinations. It’s the kind of elegance you earn: nothing too new, everything nuanced.
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Denim, that old American workhorse, underwent a metaphysical rebirth here. Pharrell introduced a brown wash inspired by the colour of coffee beans—not dyed but woven, allowing the fabric to age with a softness that echoes the brand’s bag-making heritage. Aged-gold trims and VVN leather loops completed the dialogue between ready-to-wear and artisanal savoir-faire. The idea, it seems, is not to shout luxury, but to let it speak quietly through detail.
And speak it did. Accessories were crafted with the same deliberateness. The Speedy P9 bag—a now-signature shape—returns in a parade of interpretations: pastel ostrich, tree-of-life carpet weaves, dyed crocodile. They’re tactile, painterly, and loaded with meaning—without detracting from their physical appeal to the aesthetically driven shopper.
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Elsewhere, hats evoked sun-worn years; hiking socks sparkled with lace and crystal; belts fastened with frog-shaped buckles (a motif inspired by Pharrell’s visit to Mumbai, cheekily recurring throughout the collection). One particularly poetic highlight was a check shell suit entirely woven from metal yarn—glamour and utility in quiet conspiracy.
The centrepiece that will certainly get cinephiles excited, however, may well be the revival of the Louis Vuitton x The Darjeeling Limited motif. Originally created in 2007 for Wes Anderson’s cult film, it now adorns garments, trunks, and sneakers with prancing animals—elephants, zebras, antelope—that double as narrative shorthand for journeys real and imagined. In a show so heavily themed around mobility—geographic, spiritual, social—it’s a move that feels as whimsical as it is weighted.
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That said, it wasn’t all mysticism and metaphor. Pharrell’s real genius lies in his ability to inject softness into structure. There was a rigor to the layering and an underlying logic to the lightness. The mountaineering references—shell jackets, hiking boots—were rendered with such refinement they seemed less about conquering mountains and more about revering them. Call it glamping gone metaphysical.
Some may wonder if the collection is too laden with symbolism and soft-focus sentiment, but therein lies its appeal. This was not a show designed to be consumed in one glance, nor was it engineered for virality. Instead, Pharrell offered something increasingly rare in menswear: time. Time to weather, time to wander, time to appreciate the fine grain of a lived-in jacket or the way a stripe fades just so, as if bleached by memory.