Summary
- The Code: The design team leaned hard on trompe l’oeil, disguising ultra-luxe vicuña as common work pants and engineering a new “Silk-Nylon” fabric that mimics the hand-feel of leather.
- The Toy Box: Accessories skew heavily into 1980s nostalgia, featuring bags shaped like boomboxes and alarm clocks, alongside a glow-in-the-dark remix of the Speedy P9.
A wooden freight crate landed in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, splitting open to reveal the “Drophaus,” a prefabricated home designed by Pharrell Williams with the architects at Not A Hotel. Inside this droplet-shaped pod, the air smelled of a custom scent by Master Perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, while the rooms displayed the creative director’s “Homework” furniture, featuring craggy lines that look hand-carved.
That specific “hand-carved” touch serves as the primary cheat code for the Louis Vuitton clothing on the runway. Williams played a game of high-stakes visual trickery, rolling out a “mushroom grey” blouson that looks like simple towelling but is actually shaved mink, and blue work trousers cut from double-face vicuña.
The illusion of those heavy fabrics gets flipped by the new “Silk-Nylon” hybrid textile. This mix of 51 percent silk and 49 percent recycled nylon mimics the grain and sheen of leather, showing up on oversized Christopher backpacks and a quilted parka that looks heavy but weighs nothing.
Weightlessness also defines the “Aluminum” shirts, where the fabric is bonded with actual metal to crinkle and hold a sculpture-like shape around the torso. These rigid, distinct forms stand in sharp contrast to the collection’s fluid “thermo-adaptive” silk jackets, which use membranes to repel rain without looking like technical gear.
Rain and water act as the connective tissue for the footwear, specifically the new LV Drop sneaker. The shoe features a sole molded to look like a ripple on a pond’s surface, while the suede and nylon uppers mimic the splash pattern of a droplet.
While the bags look forward, the charms hanging off them stare straight back at the 1980s. The jewelry lineup includes pendants shaped like cassette tapes and robotic bears, dangling alongside “retro-futuristic” accessories like clutches modeled after landline phones and alarm clocks.
Those analog relics sit inside luggage that feels more like a church window than a suitcase. The standout Courrier 110 trunk features stained glass scenes of Paris, soldered by the same artisans who restore the windows at the family home in Asnières, closing the loop between the sci-fi future Williams imagines and the history the brand protects.
