Pharrell Williams unveils his Fall 2026 Louis Vuitton menswear collection

Luxury? Corpgorpcore? TechTrad? iWear? Smartorialism? Beautilitarianism? Sitting in the traffic snarls post-show, it was fun to fail to think up quite the right glib category handle for the vibe that Pharrell Williams was coding in clothing at Louis Vuitton menswear tonight.

“I think we need to analyze what luxury is,” Williams had said backstage before. He’s not wrong: “luxury” has become a sprawling semantic sauce that gets souped over everything from couture to cat food. Yet a whole industry hangs on “luxury.” It should be about precision, not perception: a definitive articulation of quality over necessity.

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To their credit, Williams and his LV studio team conjured a pretty excellent menswear-specific L-word definition this evening, in a collection entitled Timeless. “It’s of the future,” Williams expanded: “So when you see all the silhouettes, it’s not super avant garde or alien. What you’re going to see is what feels familiar, classic. But it performs. I’m just basically reimagining 2026 [menswear] as I think it should be.” As he spoke a model drifted past wearing a double-breasted russet-toned suit, a little ’80s beneath a blue crocodile blouson. Williams asked him to pause, then declared: “That’s perforated crocodile!”

Williams was casting himself as a fashion Marty McFly who—at least on this runway—had twisted the time-continuum of style to place aesthetic classicism at the vanguard of technical innovation. Thus his handsome Prince of Wales check suits near the finale were tailored in a jacquard shot through with reflective fabric, to ensure visibility at night (sadly this was an effect invisible on the runway). Suiting jackets were hybridized into water repellent nylon blousons. Other check tailoring fabrics, with multicolor stripes, were ultra-light and waterproof, and sometimes embroidered with splashes of crystal that imitated the H20 these garments were crafted to repel.

Shirts were constructed with aluminium to be manipulable into specific drapes: these also seemed armor-ish. Bags and blousons were reversible in order to balance weather protection and fit projection. This collection boasted major cap game: a series of quite banal looking washed cotton caps with raised LV logos were impressively crushable and then returnable into shape. Another style in suede with a needle punched logo was totally waterproof, dry even after its dousing in Evian backstage. Some gorgeous split moc toed shoes—a little bit Paraboot, a little Russell Moccasin—were constructed in a Soft Goodyear construction that allowed their gel-buttressed leather soles to bend like the lightest of sneakers.

Pragmatic technicity applied to classic menswear paradigms was this collection’s central thrust but there was material decadence manifested in its luxury too. There was a mink bomber and another coat was crafted in a wool-alpaca-nylon jacquard hand embroidered with raindrop crystals. The photoprint jacket and overcoat were of a landscape seen through a window blurred by raindrops: Williams said this was a key personal perspective drawn from his upbringing in Virginia Beach. The all-important bags and many fun micro-accessories including bike chain necklaces and keychains, or the sculpted walkman and cassette tape jewelry, were abundantly logo-stamped. However it was notable how much Williams and his team turned down the volume and intensity of the brand language upon the clothes (the odd monogram puffer apart) this season.

In parts this collection recalled some of Thom Browne’s Gamme Bleu offerings for Moncler a decade ago: but where that was a company rooted in technical sportswear working to articulate classicism, tonight’s Williams-produced offer saw a company rooted in heritage classicism working to articulate technical functionalism. The result was a collection that often combined beautiful clothes with utilitarian function: it was luxury that does something. Or as Williams put it: “Luxury is being able to afford access to the right materials, incredible craftsmanship, and a sense of convenience.”

Vogue.com