In case you haven’t noticed, Pharrell Williams is covertly plotting a hostile takeover of the fashion world. The Grammy-Award winning producer has proven on countless occasions that he can create groundbreaking records for Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Ludacris, Nelly, Snoop Dogg, Usher, and even himself. Whether he is mentioning Bathing Ape footwear in his “Mr. Me Too” collaboration with the Clipse, giving the camera a close-up of his Ice Cream sneakers then alternating between crisp black and white Billionaire Boys Club t-shirts in Snoop Dogg’s ”Drop It Like It’s Hot” video, or showing off a stunning black blazer as he sings the chorus on Jay-Z’s “Excuse Me Miss,” Mr. Williams has a knack for connecting clothing to the curious consumer.
Last month, Eric Wilson, fashion writer for The New York Times, decided to delve deeper into the ever-expanding ventures of Mr. Williams, who was voted “Best Dressed Man in the World” by Esquire in 2005. The feature appeared in the August 2 edition of The Times. Wilson is a graduate of New York University and has spent the last eight years primarily covering fashion for The Times. His work consists of articles on everything from London Fashion Week to a recent examination into the social shopping start-up craze, as well as profiles of everyone from Michael Kors to Andre 3000.
If you thought Mr. Williams would slow down after taking a leap into the high-end clothing business, you are sadly mistaken. It is imperative that all plans are executed right away under his I Am Other business model. Rather than compiling a list of impending deals from the multitasking mogul, Wilson offered readers access to closed-door brainstorm sessions between Mr. Williams and the brands he hopes to make history with. We are taken into a meeting at the Rizzoli publishing group to overhear his novel ideas for the upcoming book, “Pharrell: Places and Spaces I’ve Been.” In another gathering at Timberland headquarters there is a great debate going on over style choices. Through a brief promotional video that accompanies the article, Bloomingdale’s previews his Bee Line designs that will soon become available at their department stores. I spoke with Wilson about his overall writing process and what it was like to follow Pharrell Williams in the literal sense and in the fashion sense.
This is the first non-music piece that we’ve seen on Pharrell in a while. How did this article come about?
He had a great take-off when the Bathing Ape collaboration started years ago and people got really excited and then he kind of fell off in fashion for a little bit and we didn’t hear anything and it turned out that was during the time they were restructuring that business due to the difficulty of the yen and things like that. In the last six months or so I think I’ve seen him six or seven times at fashion events from the [Council of Fashion Designers of America] CFDA Awards most notably and also the Lanvin show in Paris this spring. I had contacted his publicist to see what was happening with his new venture, I Am Other, which was just announced a month before so you were seeing his impact again and it seemed like a reasonable, interesting person to look at.
I know that you are not able to mention all the meetings that you attended but give us a list of what you can discuss.
I went to about six meetings. We started with Timberland. Then we went down to the Billionaire Boys Club showroom where we looked at those different lines within there. Some of the meetings I went to were on the condition that some of the names of the companies not be used for the reason that the deals were not finalized and they didn’t want me to jeopardize negotiations. There was one meeting after that I can’t tell you the name of. Then the following day we went to Rizzoli and the next day we had the Bionic Yarn meeting.
Were you given any rules on what you could and couldn’t do in these meetings?
They were wonderful to deal with. They gave me the access that I wanted. They didn’t say no to anything which was unusual.
You wrote of the partnership between Nigo and Pharrell on the Billionaire Boys Club line that is now being revamped through Roc Apparel. Are Pharrell and Nigo still partners?
Nigo is not involved. They’ve been open about it. Nigo was bought out around the time they stopped producing in Japan. The issue was that the yen because of the strong valuation had made it almost impossible for them to make any money. The prices were high to begin with but suddenly it was costing them far more to produce clothes than it was to sell them for at a price anyone would pay. So their business had gotten really tough. That’s why they made the decision to create the partnership with Roc Apparel Group. At that point, one of Pharrell’s business partners in Miami was the one who bought out Nigo in that business.
You mentioned “fabulous” and “great” to describe the clothing you saw. Please elaborate more since we weren’t there.
Well, I see a lot of celebrity collections and I have really been impressed with this line throughout its existence. It’s very specific. He’s got some really obvious vocabulary in terms of what he is doing in silhouettes and baseball jackets. He has great shorts that always have an unusual twist to them like the looser sweat shorts and amazing prints and graphics that are really very detailed and well-studied. Quite a lot of their iconography is based on astronaut patches from around the world. They really go into the archives of NASA to find space mission patches and remake them in their own imagery. I don’t think the average customer has a clue of what’s happened but a lot of work goes into those designs. That’s really an interesting story behind them.
I know it’s been almost a month since you were in those meetings. In the meeting where Pharrell talks about the audiobook with the team at Rizzoli and people react to him as if he’s nuts, do we know if his idea was ever brought to fruition?
What was interesting about that idea was that on the face it sounded kind of curious but beneath that there was actually a great concept in there. I think that’s what they are working on different apps. They are not going to be charging something for an audiobook but there will be a lot of interactive components to whatever app they develop such as you downloading it for your mobile phone.
In the Timberland meeting, Pharrell asks about getting a design in an animal skin and gets some resistance. Do you know if he was ever able to get that completed?
It ended there as far as what I’ve heard. As a company they will not use those materials. It’s not a question of them being talked into it. It’s their corporate platform.
Pharrell’s partnership with Roc Apparel is in some way perceived as a partnership with Jay-Z. What role does Jay play in this if any?
Pharrell has approval on anything he designs and Loïc Villepontoux [Brand Director at Billionaire Boys Club] is basically his eyes and ears. As I understand it, this is a license of Roc Apparel Group so basically Roc produces the clothes based on Pharrell’s designs and his team’s designs. Roc was sold several years ago to Iconix which is basically in the business of building huge apparel collections. They do Madonna for Macy’s for example and Neil Cole, who is the brother of Kenneth Cole is involved as well. I don’t think that Jay is involved in the day-to-day operations of these other lines. I don’t think he has the same overreaching role as he once did the company. I’m sure they have a connection there that most likely introduced them but in the production of the line perhaps not.
Did you get any feedback from Pharrell or his team after it went to print?
Minimal but I got one comment back that it was great. I think they wanted to see the pictures. Of course they had seen it online the night before it came out. But I didn’t hear anything beyond that.
Is there anything you felt you left out or wanted to expand upon?
If he does end up on “American Idol” that will certainly be good news and people will be more interested in him but it felt like the right time to run this piece. It’s a good summer read and the line was just about to break in the store so we wanted to get it in for that reason as well.