NOW YOU SEE IT: Just days before parading his third men’s collection for Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams teased a collaboration between the French luxury brand and Timberland.
The musician, identifiable by his jewelry including a gold Human Made bangle, is seen in a short video lifting the leg of his jeans to reveal a loosely laced yellow Timberland boot. A Louis Vuitton logo appears on the tongue of the shoe, which he folds to reveal the brand’s signature monogram printed on the inside.
The short video was posted on the Instagram account Skateboard, the unofficial account run by the musician’s team which posts behind-the-scenes content from inside the Vuitton menswear studio.
In another video, Williams can be seen wearing the boots with flared jeans, a yellow Kenzo sweatshirt and a white cowboy hat as he watches a quadruped Spot robot built by U.S. firm Boston Dynamics walking around the Vuitton studio during preparations for the show, scheduled for Jan. 16.
Ahead of his debut last June, Williams posed on Instagram in outfits from the collection, prompting Vuitton chairman and chief executive officer Pietro Beccari to gently chide his new recruit.
“Pharrell is unveiling the collection piece by piece, because it is already 20 days that he wears [items from] the show,” Beccari said in the interview last June, noting that Williams is approaching the assignment from the perspective of a prolific luxury shopper. “He’s impatient and I said, ‘He’s the client, right? So that’s it.’”
That means that industry observers will be closely scrutinizing the music star’s appearances in the run-up to his shows. A collaboration with Timberland appears a logical move, given the brand’s close association with the hip-hop community.
The workwear boot was popularized by musicians including Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and The Notorious B.I.G., who frequently rapped about his “Timbs.” The boots were also adopted by female stars like Rihanna, Missy Elliott and Aaliyah.
It wouldn’t be the first big collection for Vuitton, which under its previous menswear designer, the late Virgil Abloh, launched its own versions of Nike’s iconic Air Force 1 trainers.
Williams also has a history with Timberland, having designed several styles of the boot through his streetwear brand Billionaire Boys Club’s Bee Line collection. In 2022, a Timberland boot he customized with his own drawings sold for $7,500 on his auction platform Joopiter.
Pharrell Williams’ custom painted Timberland boots.
Robert Sadler Clark