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Avenue of Stars is Hong Kong’s answer to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, its pavement decorated with handprints made by the city’s screen legends, from silent era performers to kung fu heroes and arthouse actors and directors. It’s a promenade that wraps around the tip of the upmarket, waterfront district of Tsim Tsa Tsui, in Kowloon, facing the spectacular skyline of Hong Kong Island across the harbour.
On Thursday night local time, Avenue of Stars lived up to its name as the location for the second show from the new Louis Vuitton men’s creative director, the pop polymath and style savant Pharrell Williams, following his debut extravaganza, in Paris in June. (That one involved the small matter of closing the Pont Neuf, painting it gold, and inviting Jay-Z to perform an impromptu concert for guests including Rihanna, LeBron James and Kim Kardashian.)
The Hong Kong show was the first “pre-fall” men’s collection (clothes that will appear in shops early next summer) for the biggest luxury brand in the world, and clearly Williams and Louis Vuitton’s CEO, Pietro Baccari, also appointed earlier this year, were determined to make a splash. In the days leading up to the show a Louis Vuitton catamaran patrolled Victoria Harbour, and skyscrapers were jacketed in giant billboards announcing the event.
A few hours before the show, in a suite on the 62nd floor of a nearby luxury hotel, Williams arranged himself in an armchair and entertained questions from a handful of the many journalists, including this one, who had been flown in from around the world. He wore a pale grey sweatshirt from Kenzo, the label designed by his friend and collaborator, Nigo; bootcut jeans of his own design; purple suede skate shoes; and just the right amount of understated bling. (An oxymoron, I know, but such is Williams’ low-key affect he can make a rock as big as a fist look entirely casual.)
A red baseball cap covered his dyed blonde hair, and he wore yellow-gold-tinted spectacles. While your correspondent’s jet-lagged eyebags could have carried the contents of a Vuitton trunk, Williams appeared as fresh and smooth as a newborn. He might be the most youthful looking 50-year-old in human history, but he has the preternatural calm of an ancient sage: if he was suffering even the slightest apprehension about how his new collection would be received, he wasn’t showing it.
I asked him why we were in Hong Kong, given he could have chosen anywhere in the world to showcase his new designs. “That’s a good question, and a good answer,” he said. “I chose this place because we could go anywhere we wanted in the world. And this is where we wanted to be. Throughout my whole career, my Asian siblings have been incredibly supportive, championing me along the way. I owe so much of my career to so many people [in Asia]. This side of the earth has always been so good to us.”
He said that when he first presented his plans for Louis Vuitton to Bernard Arnault, the owner of LVMH, he made it clear that his second collection would be unveiled in Hong Kong.
The city, he said, was at last emerging from a period of darkness, and he was grateful to be able to contribute to that.
In 2019 a series of anti-government protests erupted in Hong Kong. The violence was quelled in 2020 only by the arrival of the pandemic, which led to three years of border closures, preventing residents from leaving and outsiders from visiting, and negatively impacting the economy.
“We came here in April,” Williams said, “and it was amazing. You could tell that the people were coming out of this ebbing cycle and going into the flow. They’d been quarantined for three years, and now the country is like a slingshot that’s about to be let go.” He pulled back an arm as if about to fire a projectile across the room. “You can feel it in the air,” he said. “Business is on the rise. Everything from fashion to finance is on an up here right now. So [the timing of the show] is serendipitous. It could not be better.”
As for the collection itself, he explained it is loosely themed around the idea of a Hong Kong businessman on vacation in Hawaii. “And there’s a very specific focus on the dandy,” he said, “which is what I wanted to bring to the house.” Williams is fascinated by the craft of traditional tailoring — another link to Hong Kong, which is famous for its suit-makers, a legacy of its long period as a British colony — and the daring and insouciance of stylish men of earlier eras.
As darkness fell and the city lit up, we walked beneath swaying palm trees, across a sandy catwalk, serenaded to our seats by ukulele players. The clothes, when they arrived, were confident and appealing. Double-breasted suits with bell-bottomed trousers, over chunky soled leather sandals. Double-denim. Pleated shorts and co-respondent loafers. Windbreakers and boots. A maritime theme emerged — sailor hats and pearls. And, finally, the exuberant tropical prints one associates with Hawaii, on shirts and tracksuits and even wetsuits. One model carried a surfboard, another wore a straw bucket hat.
And, at the close of the show, a spectacular light show, a murmuration of hundreds of drones making patterns in the sky, as if we were witness to an alien visitation, a close encounter of the N*E*R*D kind.
“This continues to be a dream,” Williams had said, earlier in the day, of his new job. “But that’s what we do. We build dreams.”
