The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 294 — Pharrell really did that 👏🏽
The good and bad on Pharrell's first Louis Vuitton show
Goooooood morning, family. It’s Sykes, once again, welcoming you back to the Kicks You Wear. Thank you so much for rocking with me today. I appreciate y’all.
IT’S MAIL TIME: The last Friday of the month is here — can you believe June is already over?!? That also means that it’s KYW mailbag time. Feel free to drop any questions or comments you have on the newsletter, sneaker culture, or whatever you’re feeling at this link here!
With that said, let’s jump in.
Pharrell’s first Louis Vuitton show was a success
When we first learned that Pharrell would be following in the footsteps of Virgil Abloh as Louis Vuitton’s new creative director, I had so much pause.
My thinking: It was easy to see why this was the move from a cultural standpoint. This is Pharrell. He’s one of the coolest dudes ever. But it felt like it’d been a while since he’d impacted fashion creatively.
I wrote about it more in-depth here, but long story short, the best thing in my estimation that we've seen from Pharrell in recent years was the Human Race NMD. And that feels stale now.
He hadn't demonstrated himself to be the same creative genius he was from the BBC days.
But Louis Vuitton still trusted him to make something shake. And, after LV’s Paris Fashion Week show at Pont Neuf, it's evident why. Everywhere you turned on the internet, there were remnants of the LV show.
The fashion was fine: There wasn’t necessarily anything over the top that was going to catch people’s eyes. I won’t call Pharrell’s Spring/Summer 2024 collection for LV conservative, but it certainly didn’t have that out-of-the-box feel we’d gotten from many of Virgil’s shows. He ain’t have nobody dress up as a building.
Instead, he seemed to play on his roots.
He broke the collection down into 5 sections that included formal wear, comfort wear, vacation wear, sportswear and essentials.
There were folks walking down dressed in kangols and tracksuits with Louis Vuitton’s classic checkerboard pattern adorning every inch. It was slick stuff.
Good read: A review of Pharrell’s LVovers Louis V collection.
But it really wasn’t the wears that sold people. It was the faces Pharrell got to pop out and endorse the product that really pushed it over the top.
This dude got Jerrod Carmichael and The Clipse to actually walk the runway for his show.
He had LeBron James, Jay Z, Beyoncé, Zendaya and more sitting in the front row for him.
He also had Hov and Bey actually perform. Y’all. Do you know who much it takes to get them to perform?
That’s huge: As big as Virgil Abloh was for Louis Vuitton, I don’t think even he could pull some of those cards. And that’s exactly the thing that Louis Vuitton wanted to tap into with this. Celebrity sells. Pharrell is connected to so many high-level celebrities.
Is he going to have to improve his collections at some point? Probably. Cathy Horyn over at The Cut wrote some good words on this.
But he needs something more. Call it audacity. Many of the designs, like the Damier-checked sportswear and the pixelated camouflage patterns, were well executed but hardly a test of the imagination, and several looks or individual products seemed an easy repeat of styles or attitudes that have been around for a bit, like the notion of wearing a boxy Chanel-like cardigan jacket with a skirt, crunched-down socks, and modified brogues. Shades of Marc Jacobs? Or maybe Williams himself. He showed varsity jackets, apparently a nod to his high-school years and now embellished. Alas, the style is a frequent flier on the runways. Williams did not seize the opportunity to propose any new shapes, or ways of addressing the body, or thinking about luxury — in short, anything that might challenge assumptions.
And she’s absolutely right. At some point, Pharrell is going to have to hit a bit harder and think over the top — the same way Abloh once did. But I think, right now, Louis Vuitton feels really good about its bet.
The bet is this: No matter what he does with his collections, it’ll mostly work as long as he can keep those big names showing up. That’s exactly what played out.
That's exactly why he's the right person for this job.
No signature shoe for Wembanyama…yet
As I suspected before newly minted San Antonio Spur Victor Wembanyama was even drafted, the French phenom will continue to be a Nike athlete. There’s no new deal coming for him just yet.
Nike got in early: Wembanyama had already signed a deal with Nike while playing in the French league. According to ESPN’s Nick DePaula, the two sides are just continuing that deal.
It’s a “multi-year” footwear and apparel deal, which sounds a lot like the cash deal that we talked about with Nikola Jokic a couple weeks ago.
Wembanyama has been wearing a size 20.5 GT Run so far in his career. DePaula says he’ll continue to wear that for now.
So it sounds pretty clear that, for now, at least, there’s not a signature Victor Wembanyama shoe coming.
I should’ve known: Thinking about it from a historical perspective, this is the way things usually work out.
Only 9 players in the history of signature basketball shoes have actually managed to have their own sneakers launched as rookies.
The players: Lonzo Ball (Big Baller Brand, 2017), LeBron James (Nike, 2003), Stephon Marbury (AND1, 1996), Allen Iverson (Reebok, 1996), Jerry Stackhouse (FILA, 1995), Grant Hill (FILA, 1994), Shaquille O’Neal (Reebok, 1992), Michael Jordan (Nike, 1984) and Hakeem Olajuwon (Etonics, 1984).
Simply put, it doesn’t happen often. Lonzo Ball is the latest one and he launched a sneaker independently. The last time a big brand gave a rookie a signature model was in 2003 and that was for LeBron James.
Digging in even further, Nike has also only done that twice — for James and Michael Jordan. James was the greatest prospect ever at the time so Nike had to go all out for him. Nike also desperately needed Jordan to legitimize itself, so the company had to go all out for him, too.
This is different: As great as Wembanyama seems to be, he’s relatively unproven and already signed with Nike. If he wasn’t? I think it might be a different story.
A signature shoe is coming at some point, to be sure. Especially if the kid is as good as everyone thinks he is. It’s only a matter of time.
BUSTED
In today’s “Sneakers are assets first” news, Los Angeles police raided a warehouse with $7 million worth of sneakers in it last week, per CBS Los Angeles.
The sneakers were taken to a warehouse after “several” shipping containers were stolen from the port of LA with the sneakers in it.
The thieves are in the wind. When police busted the warehouse open the only thing they found were the sneakers.
Among the SKUs included bunch of pairs of the Nike x NOCTA Glide sneakers set to release later this week.
At this point I’m just waiting for someone to make another Oceans movie with the plot surrounding a $100 million pair of sneakers. (I would pay money to see that, by the way.)
But this just keeps happening.
Earlier this year, there was an attempted theft of some sneakers off of a train in Memphis carrying cargo.
And I’m sure you remember the $800,000 worth of sneakers stolen from Nike trailers in September.
Zooming out: Even as the sneaker market continues to cool off, hyped sneakers still remain a hot commodity — one that people are seriously willing to steal in order to make a profit. I don’t think that’s changing anytime soon.
Burn these with fire, please
Y’all know where I’m going with this. I hate very few things. But the combination of Crocs and MSCHF’s stupid boots have me seething right now.
Get these abominations outta here, man. Cancel MSCHF. Idk. Somebody do something about this. Please. I’m begging.
What’s droppin, bruh?
Nike x NOCTA “Glide” — Thursday, June 29
Action Bronson x New Balance 990v6 “Lapis Lazuli” — Thursday, July 29
New Balance MiUSA 990v4 “Purple and Navy” — Thursday, July 29
Air Jordan 7 “White and Infrared” — Friday, June 30
Asics Gel-Kayano 14 “Metallic Plum” — Saturday, July 1
Thank you so much for reading the newsletter today. I appreciate your time. Don’t forget, drop your questions in the mailbox this week for the mailbag!
Let’s chat again on Friday. Until then, folks. Peace and love. Be easy, be safe, be kind. And we out.
-Sykes 💯