My brain was rewired, as it so often is at work, by a banging jacket. At Louis Vuitton men's fall/winter 2024 show, a tasselled overcoat in ivory white kicked things off. This was to be a tribute to Native American culture and Americana, and the many faces of the Wild West; creative director Pharrell even said as much to WWD and the travelling Fashion Week press corps. “I felt like when you see cowboys portrayed, you see only a few versions… They look like us, they look like me. They look Black, they look Native American.”
And yet despite the awesome power wielded during Big Coat season – and this bountiful, smooth-lapelled grail was undoubtedly a Big Coat – it was not the Moby Dick-esque piece of obsession. Instead, the supporting act underneath put jumpstart cables on menswearheads across the world. In a matching shade of ivory was a thick overshirt jacket, as smooth as porcelain, and as pure as the driven snow, and, for all of the blank canvas-ness, still really fun.
What followed was a carousel of jackets in all manner of formats and styles, each one plugged into a distinct pillar of menswear, but still part of Pharrell’s Nowheresville out west. There were embroidered denim, and bronzite blazers, Presley zoot suits, rich lady boucle jackets, snake-print leather, worker jackets, roomy bombers, Pharrell’s pixelated ‘damoflage’ suits, tasselled bikers, tracksuit jackets, varsity jackets, a combo of the two (as modelled by Pusha T), even something that looked like a luxeification of the famous Carhartt Detroit jacket. An embarrassment of riches!
If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. At a time when fashion’s pundit class demands shouty things like ‘COHESION’ and ‘A COMMON THREAD’, having so many different bits could be seen as a bad thing. But it worked. Pharrell is familiar with the magic of solid jackets. During his Moncler partnership, he made an inflated, quilted body vest feel pretty wearable. The Adidas Pharrell William jacket was deeply classic; the sort of tracksuit that smartly reflected the long, immediately recognisable legacy of the triple-striped ‘Beckenbauer’. Shortly after the announcement of his election as Louis Vuitton men’s creative director in early 2023, he stepped out in New York wearing a brown biker in the house monogram, teasing at the possibilities of his tenure at the most valuable luxury brand on the planet. The jacket is a set piece – not just for Very Famous Men, but all men.
And with every passing bomber or boucle, I kept coming back to one word: fun. There was all the seriousness you'd come to expect of a majestic, many-parts fashion show. But each jacket was a welcome counter to the subtlety of many shows elsewhere. You might call it ‘quiet luxury’, when, really, it's just how the mega-minted have always dressed: low-key, luxury, understated with few logos.
Which isn't say the latest Louis Vuitton jackets are logo'd out and louder than a July flight to Ibiza. Monograms were studded in, again a riff on the western jackets of yore, and branding was warped, or reserved to tiny little patches. But more impressive was the breadth of it all: few shows have reeled out so many different jackets for so many different people and still remain ‘on-message'. Or maybe that was the point. The Wild West isn't one static idea with one John Wayne-looking frontman. Vuitton's jackets, then, aren't just for one sort of person.