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    Diane von Furstenberg, a Fashion Lioness in Winter

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    Diane von Furstenberg’s friends like to tease that, had she been on the cinematic Titanic, she would have found a way to hoist up Jack from the freezing water and onto that wooden door. Three days later, Jack in tow, she would have sashayed into a soignée New York dinner party wearing that 56-carat blue diamond necklace.The woman has a strong will.I realized that the first time I met her in 1975, when I was a cub reporter at The Washington Star. At 28, Ms. von Furstenberg was already a sensation with the phenomenally successful $86 wrap dress; she had conjured it after seeing Julie Nixon Eisenhower on TV defending her father during Watergate, wearing a DVF wrap top and skirt.The tycooness, on a visit to D.C. to promote her brand, was in a rush to get to the airport and asked if I could come down to her car for the interview.I felt like I was climbing into a cage with a panther. I got into the back of a black limo and there she was in a dark mink coat, her long dark hair with a henna sheen spilling over her shoulders, her legs sheathed in black fishnets. She was nibbling from a box of dark chocolates on her lap. In her sultry Belgian accent, she offered me one. Her voice, as her late friend, Vogue’s André Leon Talley, said, “wraps itself around you like a cozy, warm cashmere muffler.”That half-hour in her limo was a revelation. In an era when we were instructed by male “experts” to dress and act like men to get ahead, Ms. von Furstenberg insisted on living a man’s life in a woman’s body. Her message was bracing: Meet men as equals but don’t imitate them. Ambition and stilettos can coexist.I immediately tossed out all my hideous dress-for-success floppy ties.I caught up with Ms. von Furstenberg recently to talk about a new Hulu documentary, “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge,” on her vertiginous, glamorous life, a life darkened by the Holocaust, AIDS, her bout with tongue cancer and her periodic business woes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sprinter Vans Have Become a Staple for Celebrities at the Met Gala

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      Famous actors, singers, athletes and housewives are fans of the Mercedes-Benz van, which has become a staple in streets outside events like the Met Gala.When Kendall Jenner attended the 2022 Met Gala in a Prada gown with an enormous flowing skirt, getting her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art required special transportation. A limousine would not do, nor would an SUV — walking in the dress was a challenge; sitting, impossible. The solution: Ms. Jenner would be driven, standing, in a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van.On the way to the event, as a way to relieve her anxiety about running late, Ms. Jenner relieved herself in an ice bucket while standing in the van. “Best decision I ever made,” she said of that moment in an episode of “The Kardashians” on Hulu.The Sprinter van, a towering box on wheels with nearly six-and-a-half feet of head room, is a direct descendant of the earliest motorized caravans developed by Karl Benz in 1896. (Some 30 years later, he and Gottlieb Daimler founded the Mercedes-Benz company.) The Sprinter, first released in Europe in 1995, started being sold domestically in 2010. Last year, Mercedes-Benz unveiled an electric version.The van — which can be used to transport up to 15 passengers (or cargo) — is appreciated by automotive enthusiasts for its build quality, reliability and versatility, as well as for the thrust and longevity of the diesel engine in most versions.But other people have come to recognize the Sprinter for different reasons, among them its proximity to celebrities. The van has become a preferred mode of transportation for actors, singers, athletes and “Real Housewives,” and is now a staple in streets outside star-studded events like the Oscars and the Met Gala.Sprinter vans, like the one behind Amber Valletta, a model and actress, have become a staple in streets outside red carpet events. Neil Rasmus/BFAWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Anya Firestone, Tour Guide and Star of ‘The Real Girlfriends of Paris,’ on ‘The Art of Drinking’

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      Anya Firestone leads what she calls “cou-tours” around Paris: Tours tailored to the clients’ interests, be they dinosaurs, drag queens or booze.On a recent morning at the Louvre, Anya Firestone handed out bottles of Evian. “Because ‘the art of drinking’ begins with hydration,” she said.Ms. Firestone, 34, a museum guide-conférencière (tour guide) and art integration strategist, wore rhinestone earrings in the shape of olive martinis, pink Manolo Blahniks, the Mini Bar clutch by Charlotte Olympia and a Marni dress printed with likenesses of Venus. She escorted Matt Stanley, her client, and his Parisian date, Salomé Bes, 30, past the long lines at the museum’s entrance and toward the Code of Hammurabi. The set of ancient Babylonian laws included “an eye for an eye,” she explained, and it also dealt with issues of alcoholic beverages, like watered-down wine and the peoples’ “right to beer,” as she pithily put it.“Pretty impressive!” said Mr. Stanley, the chief executive of a memory care community near Austin, Texas. Mr. Stanley, 43, had hired Ms. Firestone to design a two-day visit around alcohol.“You’re going to see that drinking and art had the same upbringing and moved in the same direction — from a religious context with prayers and libations to decadence and debauchery,” said Ms. Firestone, who calls her custom tours “cou-tours,” a play on couture.Ms. Firestone speaks before “The Romans in their Decadence” by Thomas Couture at the Musée d’Orsay. “I don’t describe myself as American,” she said. “I say I’m New-Yorkaise.”Hugues Laurent for The New York TimesLast fall, Ms. Firestone starred in “The Real Girlfriends of Paris,” a reality show broadcast on Bravo that followed six 20- and 30-something American women as they navigated work, life and l’amour. She said that the opportunity to put her business, called Maison Firestone, on public view was the main reason she had done the show. But Ms. Firestone had also liked the idea of elevating the oft-scorned TV genre with art and culture. (Not to mention some pun- and Yiddish-inflected wit.) “By the way,” she said, “I don’t describe myself as American. I say I’m New-Yorkaise.”Ms. Firestone was raised in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood Manhattan; her parents were actors. She first moved to Paris in 2010 after college at George Washington University, for an artist residency, during which she wrote poetry and sculpted oversize macarons. (People thought they were colorful hamburgers,” she said, explaining that the confection had not become popular yet.) She worked briefly as an au pair, channeling Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp, she said. But Ms. Firestone likened her current plot to the TV shows “Emily in Paris” — “Love her chutzpah, less her bucket hats,” she said of the protagonist — and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” After a master’s degree in French cultural studies from Columbia Global Center in Paris, she spent a few years traveling between New York and Paris, offering custom tours and writing about art and brand intersections for Highsnobiety. Maison Firestone — which also designs themed events with luxury brands — followed from that interest in “art as branding,” she said.Ms. Firestone often dresses according to her tour theme. In this case, she carried a “Mini Bar” clutch by Charlotte Olympia.Hugues Laurent for The New York TimesAt the Ritz, Ms. Firestone wore rhinestone earrings in the shape of a martini.Hugues Laurent for The New York TimesAt “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” a white marble statue from Hellenistic Greece, better known as “Niké,” for example, Ms. Firestone noted that the figure’s wings had inspired the sportswear empire’s Swoosh logo.Ms. Firestone’s clients used to find her only by word of mouth, but now about half of them, including Mr. Stanley, come to her via the Bravo show and Instagram. The majority are visiting France from the United States; the cost of a tour starts at $2,400 for one or two people for one day.Her angle is to take “art off the wall to show its intersection with things that people already enjoy and consume,” Ms. Firestone said, be it champagne or Schiaparelli or N.F.T.s. Recent and upcoming tours have been designed for drag queens, the crypto team at a venture capital firm, “Eloise-like” little girls with a fondness for dinosaurs, and a man who is blind.The female statue is a Roman copy of a Greek statue of a maenad, at the Louvre.Hugues Laurent for The New York TimesWorking her way through Dionysian art and decorative works, Louis XIV’s stemware, and the occasional Bravo fan (“I just want to say that I loved the show!”), Ms. Firestone directed Mr. Stanley and Ms. Bes into the museum’s largest room, where the Mona Lisa hangs on a wall across from “The Wedding Feast at Cana,” an immense piece by the 16th-century artist Paolo Veronese that depicts Jesus Christ turning water into wine. “You can see wine tastings happening all over the painting,” she said.After lunch at the Ritz, which naturally featured cocktails and champagne, the itinerary called for the Musée d’Orsay. “The Louvre was a former palace, this is a former train station,” Ms. Firestone said. She likes companion visits to the two museums, which, she said, help to show how art entered modernity by breaking from the monarchy, the church and the academy and spilling into the cafes of Paris.“L’Absinthe” by Edgar Degas pictured what she called a “tapped out” woman with a glass of the infamous green spirit on a table before her. Nearby was a painting by Édouard Manet of the same woman (the actress Ellen Andrée), titled “Plum Brandy.” Ms. Firestone prompted her clients to ponder the difference. “She’s not nearly so sad or so schnockered here, right? She seems OK.”The tour naturally included Louis XIV’s stemware at the Louvre.Hugues Laurent for The New York TimesParis, she said, had by then been transformed by Napoleon III’s urban planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann, bringing with it grand department stores like Le Bon Marché and Samaritaine.Ms. Firestone and Mr. Stanley met the next day at Samaritaine, where she had arranged for a cognac tasting and some shopping in the private apartments with a stylist. “Bonjour. How y’all doin’?” Mr. Stanley said, greeting the staff. “I’m not an aristocrat — I’m just a cowboy!” He chose a pair of drawstring trousers by Maison Margiela.Afterward, in a taxi, Ms. Firestone pointed at a Prada ad featuring Scarlett Johansson. “I think they’re referencing that Man Ray photo of Kiki de Montparnasse,” she said. “We like a good art-brand ref.” She Googled the Man Ray photograph on her phone and held it up for Mr. Stanley to see, who said he felt like he had gotten a master class.“Who doesn’t love their hand held in Paris?” Ms. Firestone said. More

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      in Television

      Does ‘And Just Like That …’ Signal the End of Stealth Wealth?

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      So does the pop culture and fashion wheel turn.And just like that, stealth wealth, the aesthetic made viral by “Succession,” with its toxic billionaires in their Loro Piana baseball caps and Tom Ford hoodies locked in a C-suite cage match to the death, has been swept off screen.In its place: logomania, branding that can be seen from whole city blocks away and accessories that jangle and gleam with the blinding light of bragging rights.The outfits, that is to say, of Carrie and Co. in Season 2 of “And Just Like That …,” the “Sex and the City” reboot come recently to Max — the streamer that, as it happens, also gave us the Roys in their greige cashmere. Both shows are set in New York City, the home of strivers and entrepreneurs, of “Washington Square” and Wharton, of constantly evolving social castes highly, and literally, invested in their own identifiable camouflage.If watching “Succession” was in part like engaging in a detective game to suss out what character was wearing what brand, so insider were the fashion politics, watching “And Just Like That …” is like attending brandapalooza: the double Cs and Fs and Gs practically whacking you on the head with their presence. (Warning: Spoilers are coming.) All the over-the-top fashionista-ing is back. The room-size closets!It’s the yin to the “Succession” yang: a veritable celebration of the comforting aspirational dreams of self-realization (or self-escapism) embedded in stuff that may actually be the most striking part of an increasingly stale series. Certainly, the clothes, which often serve as their own plot points, are more memorable than any dialogue.Well … except maybe for that instantly classic line in Episode 1, uttered by Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) on her way to the Met Gala in reference to her gown and feather hat: “It’s not crazy — it’s Valentino.” But that’s the exception that proves the rule.Lisa Todd Wexley stopping traffic on her way to the Met Gala in Valentino.Craig Blakenhorn/MaxThere is Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), with her multiple Manolos and Fendis, self-medicating with shopping, returning home one day with six Bergdorf Goodman bags. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) toting her Burberry doggy poop bag (also possessed of a Burberry apron and Burberry ear muffs) and bemoaning the fact that her teenage daughter hocked her Chanel dress to fund her musical aspirations.Lisa Todd Wexley dropping her kids off for camp in a bright green Louis Vuitton jacket and scarf. And Seema (Sarita Choudhury), the character that passes for a restrained dresser thanks to her penchant for neutrals (and the occasional animal print), loudly lamenting the theft of her caramel-colored Hermès Birkin — one of her totems of self, ripped directly from her hands.Lisa Todd Wexley dropping her children off for camp in Louis Vuitton.Jason Howard/Bauer-Griffin/GC ImagesSeema with her caramel-colored Hermès Birkin.Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin, via GC ImagesThere is Loewe and Pierre Cardin; Altuzarra and Dries Van Noten. There is also an effort to repurpose clothes, like Carrie’s wedding dress, in order to promote the virtues of rewearing, but it’s pretty much lost in all the rest of the muchness. There is a dedicated Instagram account on which the costume designers Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago share their finds, with 277,000 followers. @Successionfashion, by contrast, has 184,000.All of which means what, exactly? Is the era of quiet luxury, so recently embraced by TikTok, already at an end? Have our attention spans, so famously abbreviated, moved on? Has the physics of fashion exerted its force and produced an equal and opposite reaction to an earlier action?As if. In many ways, the fashion in “And Just Like That …” seems to protest too much. In part that’s because it seems like a regurgitation of the fun that came before, which was itself a reaction to the minimalism of the early 1990s, which itself was born in that decade’s recession.The fact is, no matter how much lip service has been paid to quiet luxury or stealth wealth or whatever you want to call it, and how it is 2023’s “hottest new fashion trend,” it was never a recent invention. It has been around since way back when it was referred to as “shabby chic” or “connoisseurship” or “old money,” all synonyms for the kind of product that didn’t look overtly expensive but was a sign of aesthetic genealogy — the difference between new money and inherited money that fashion co-opted and regurgitated to its own ends. Just as more obviously coded consumption has been around since Louis Vuitton plunked his initials on some leather back in 1896 or since Jay Gatsby started tossing his shirts.Note the Fendi bag on the back of Carrie’s chair.HBO MaxFind the Burberry-branded doggy poop bag tucked on Charlotte’s arm.HBO MaxWe’ve been declaring the “end of logos” and, alternately, the “rise of stealth wealth” for decades now. There are cycles when one is more ubiquitous than the other (usually having to do with economic downturns when flaunting disposable income is not a great look), but they exist in tandem. They help define each other.Consider that during the current economic uncertainty, exactly the kind of environment that tends to fast-forward the appeal of low-key high-cost items, the most successful global brands have remained the most highly identifiable: Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermès. Or that in his recent debut for Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams introduced a bag called Millionaire that costs — yup — $1 million. (It’s a yellow croc Speedy with gold and diamond hardware.)What is more interesting is, as Carrie and the gang continue on their merry wardrobed way, how clichéd both styles now seem, how performative. Once they have trickled up to television, it’s impossible not to recognize the costume. Or the fact that whichever look you buy into, they are simply different ways of expressing wealth, in all its decorative strata. And wealth itself never goes out of fashion. More

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      in Music

      Pharrell Williams on His New Role at Louis Vuitton

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      Earlier this month, Pharrell Williams was in the men’s atelier on the second floor of Louis Vuitton’s corporate office in Paris, sunglasses on, surveying his new perch.“Listen,” he said conspiratorially. “This window is different.”The window by his desk looks out over the small plaza on the north side of the Pont Neuf, where in just a couple of weeks, his first show as Louis Vuitton men’s creative director would take place. A 50-foot statue of the artist Yayoi Kusama, a Vuitton collaborator, hovered just outside. The rapper Pusha T and the streetwear innovator Nigo were milling about.Since Mr. Williams’s appointment was announced in February, he has spent a great deal of his time here, in this office and in the workshops that abut it, getting accustomed to holding the reins of the huge business he had been put at the creative helm of — the first time a musician has been given such a grand platform in luxury fashion.“I pinch myself every day,” he said. “This is the equivalent of a castle to me. I mean, the Seine River right there — it’s like the moat.”The long path from his childhood in Virginia Beach through hip-hop producer stardom to streetwear design impact to pop music ubiquity to here was very much on his mind. “I’m a Black man — they have given this appointment to a Black man,” he said. “This is the crown jewel of the LVMH portfolio. It’s everything, and I was appointed to rule in this position. So No. 1, a ruler of a position is usually like a king. But a ruler of this position for me is a perpetual student. It’s what I intend to be.”A little bit later in the afternoon, Mr. Williams, 50, slipped off his blazer and slipped on a brown motorcycle jacket in full LV monogram print leather. Emblazoned on the back, in studs, were the words “PUPIL” and “KING.”His appointment to the helm of Vuitton’s men’s business is, depending on your perspective, a full-throated acknowledgment of the power of Black cultural capital on a global stage and a watershed moment in the absorption of hip-hop class politics into luxury fashion. Or it’s a bellwether of challenging times to come for traditionally trained clothing designers who aspire to top posts, and a suggestion that global celebrity moves the needle more than directional design, even for the most successful luxury brands.Either way, Mr. Williams did not apply for the job — he was chosen.In December, Alexandre Arnault, a scion of the LVMH dynasty and a longtime friend, sent Mr. Williams a text: “Please call me. The time has come.”Mr. Williams at the Vuitton men’s atelier with Nigo, the innovative streetwear designer with whom Mr. Williams founded Billionaire Boys Club.Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesMr. Williams thought Mr. Arnault was perhaps going to run some name options by him for the Vuitton job. “I had been pushing somebody else,” he said. “I had been pushing Nigo. My brother, always.”Nigo — the founder of the brands A Bathing Ape and Human Made, the co-founder with Mr. Williams of Billionaire Boys Club and one of the most significant streetwear innovators — had already been named artistic director of Kenzo, another LVMH brand.Instead, Mr. Arnault extended the offer to Mr. Williams. “I had always wanted to work with him, in any way, shape or form since I started working in the group, which is already 10-plus years ago,” Mr. Arnault said. “And it was just never the right time because either the companies were too small to work with someone as big as him, or there were already people in charge, or he was working with Chanel. And stars were so aligned now, finally.”Mr. Williams said, “I’m not calling it fortune — I’m calling it favor.”Hiring Mr. Williams was one of the first decisions overseen by Pietro Beccari, a longtime LVMH executive, who was announced as chairman and chief executive of Louis Vuitton in January. “After Virgil, I couldn’t choose a classical designer,” Mr. Beccari said. “It was important that we found someone having a broader spectrum than being a very fantastic designer, which is great for the industry and we have many of them. But for that particular place, at Louis Vuitton, after Virgil, I thought we needed something more. Something that went beyond just pure design.”Mr. Williams signed the contract on Valentine’s Day and soon relocated his wife and four children and much of his team. “Listen, I miss my house in Miami,” he said. “And my house in Virginia. I really do. But right now, Paris is the center of the earth for me.”Playing the Game, or NotHis skin is as good as you think it is — the additional pressure, or labor, or scrutiny of his new position has left no creases.There was ease in his silhouette, too: a tight black double breasted vintage Vuitton blazer and well-worn white LV Trainer Snow Boots peeking out under bunched-up, flared dark bluejeans embroidered with faces derived from paintings by the Black artist Henry Taylor. The pants — one of a few pieces Mr. Williams has deployed Taylor’s work for — will appear in the spring-summer 2024 collection, which will be shown in Paris on June 20.He requested a tailor to come take a look at the hem of the jeans, which was a smidge too long on one side, and then sauntered over to the main conference table in the room, where he asked some colleagues to pull up images from his first ad campaign. It featured a pregnant Rihanna clutching multiple Louis Vuitton Speedy bags in primary colors, one of the first playful tweaks Mr. Williams is bringing to the company’s heritage. The Speedy, one of Louis Vuitton’s most recognizable designs, dates to 1930 and resembles a doctor’s bag.“I am a creative designer from the perspective of the consumer,” he said. “I didn’t go to Central Saint Martins. But I definitely went in the stores and purchased, and I know what I like.”Mr. Williams’s first ad campaign for Vuitton stars Rihanna, who clutches multiple Speedy bags.Louis VuittonHe told Mr. Beccari something similar. “He said, ‘I don’t feel like a creative director here, I feel like a client,’” Mr. Beccari recalled, adding that he trusted Mr. Williams’s natural instincts despite his never having managed a business of this scale. “I didn’t even have to speak to him about the commercial importance of what he does and the importance in terms of turnover and volume of sales, but just the importance in terms of impact.”Mr. Williams looked at his Rihanna ads the way one might pose after a particularly athletic dunk. He pointed to one and said, “That’s the golden ratio.” For emphasis, he had an associate pull up the same image overlaid with the long golden spiral, the center of it landing directly on Rihanna’s belly.“What I love about this is, it’s the biggest fashion house in the world, and that is a Black woman with child,” Mr. Williams said.Sarah Andelman, the founder of the pioneering Paris retailer Colette, and a collaborator of Mr. Williams’s, said he makes creative choices “not just for the sake of doing things. There is a story and, I would say in French, profondeur, a meaning to what he will do.”Mr. Williams basked in the refracted shine from the screen full of Rihanna images.“I know there’s a game,” he said. “I’m just not here to play it.”Mr. Williams at the men’s atelier. “A ruler of a position is usually like a king,” he said. “But a ruler of this position for me is a perpetual student. It’s what I intend to be.”Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesThe Two-Decade Crash CourseAlmost since the beginning of his career in music, Mr. Williams had found ways to incorporate, and create, fashion. In 2003, he founded Billionaire Boys Club with Nigo, perhaps his closest creative ally in style. Explaining the creative kinship between the two men, Nigo, through an interpreter, said, “The first time I went to Pharrell’s house in Virginia, when I looked in the wardrobe, everything was the same as what I owned.”In 2003, Mr. Williams met Marc Jacobs, then the men’s creative director of Vuitton, who invited him to collaborate on a pair of sunglasses. The result, known as the Millionaires, became a hip-hop luxury staple in the mid-2000s and an updated version of them is still sold today.“He was just so incredibly generous to give me that opportunity when nobody had ever given any of us an opportunity to be creative,” Mr. Williams said of Mr. Jacobs. (The Millionaires were designed by Mr. Williams, with Nigo.)“I thought the way forward for Louis Vuitton was to collaborate with other creatives,” Mr. Jacobs said. “It didn’t matter to me whether they were from music or art or other fashion designers, whether it was Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami or Pharrell.”Back then, when Mr. Williams arrived in Paris, Mr. Jacobs gave him vouchers to shop in the stores. “I was very nouveau riche at that time,” Mr. Williams said, tilting his head down and offering just the tiniest hint of a knowing smirk. Mr. Williams also designed jewelry for Vuitton a few years later.Other collaborations followed: Moncler, G-Star, Moynat, Reebok, a long partnership with Adidas and an almost decade-long affiliation with Chanel and Mr. Williams’s close friend Karl Lagerfeld.Mr. Williams met Marc Jacobs in the early aughts, when Mr. Jacobs was the men’s creative director at Vuitton.Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty ImagesMr. Williams and Karl Lagerfeld shared a close friendship and had a decade-long collaboration at Chanel.Swan Gallet/WWD, via Getty ImagesBut none of those gigs had the complexity, or stakes, of his current assignment.“Over the past several weeks he’s had a crash course in design and how to run a studio and how to manage a team of 40, 50 people and how to take criticism and work with the people at the top because, you know, it’s a blend of creativity and also running a business,” said Matthew Henson, who has been a personal stylist for Mr. Williams for the last couple of years.Mr. Henson is also styling the show, along with Cynthia Lu, Mr. Williams’s former assistant who is now a quiet powerhouse of idiosyncratic streetwear with her brand Cactus Plant Flea Market.When Mr. Williams walks through the studios, his awe for the specialized design teams appears genuine. “Presto, things get turned around so fast,” he said. “I’ve had more resources than I’ve ever had in my entire life. They just don’t miss. Like at all. None. Nobody.”That was something he was prepared for, in part, by conversations he had with Virgil Abloh, after Mr. Abloh was hired for this same job in 2018. In the three years at the helm of Vuitton’s men’s wear before his sudden death in late 2021, Mr. Abloh upended ideas about how a luxury house might function, and what story it might be able to tell in dialogue with those who had long been held at arm’s length from luxury fashion. Just outside the atelier hangs the crucial, defining image from Mr. Abloh’s first ad campaign for Louis Vuitton: a Black toddler draped in a “Wizard of Oz”-themed sweater, one of Mr. Abloh’s first signature pieces.Mr. Williams recalled Mr. Abloh’s awe at the scale and efficiency of the atelier. “He would always talk about how they never say no, which they don’t,” he said. “So that’s a responsibility not to abuse them.”Mr. Williams is now the second consecutive Black American in the role. “Over here, they lift us,” he said. “They appreciate what we do. They see the talent that we have.”Mr. Williams, in 2016, with Virgil Abloh, who as artistic director of Vuitton upended ideas of how a luxury house might function,Amy Sussman/WWD, via Getty ImagesThe Arnault family, he said, understands how crucial the Black American dollar and aesthetic has been to the growth and cachet of Louis Vuitton: “One hundred percent they know it,” he said. “We’ve had some conversations about how important the community is to them, and how being supportive to them is a natural and a prerequisite.”He is looking to expand the house’s brand ambassador program beyond the usual musicians and actors to Black academics, Black authors, a Black astrophysicist, even a Black bass fishing champion.“They have to be supportive of the culture because the culture contributes to the bottom line,” he said.A New HumilityThere are some things that Mr. Williams simply will not say. In public settings, at least, he speaks with the deliberateness of someone who wants no word to be misapprehended. His sunglasses stay on. (“I need something for myself,” he said.) Rhetorically, he returns to familiar narratives and motifs — the seismic changes in his life every 10 years, the eternal quest for learning, the continuing practice of gratitude.“He never speaks the truth of himself, and I hate it,” said Pusha T, who has known Mr. Williams for three decades. “It’s my pet peeve about him. He knows he’s great at things, but he wants that to walk him through the door versus him saying, ‘Hey guys, come on. Let me through.’”Squint hard, though, and you may see the faintest flickers of the mid-2000s Pharrell Williams, a more boisterous and boasty person. A whiff of the old self popped out in a video Mr. Williams posted in late January, backstage at the Kenzo show with Nigo, when he knew he was on the verge of signing his contract. “You know what rhymes with 2023? Money money tree,” he said into his phone camera, nodding intensely. He didn’t lick his lips, but he might as well have.When the appointment was announced, Tyler, the Creator, a longtime acolyte and style guru in his own right, FaceTimed Mr. Williams. “He just has this look he gives me where he kind of just goes like, ‘Yeahhhh, I did that.’ He didn’t say anything,” Tyler said. “And then he gave me the praying hands.”Mr. Williams performing at Roseland in New York in 2004. Rahav Segev for The New York TimesOn his 2006 mixtape “In My Mind: The Prequel,” a dizzying display of Dionysian ostentation, a peacock at the peak of his peacocking, Mr. Williams rapped, “We wanted this life, we salivated like wolves/ Blow a hundred grand on LV leather goods.”Mr. Williams almost flinched at the memory: “I was greeeeeasy on that.”Now, he said, “I promise you I really love being humble.” But luxury fashion is not a business built on humility, and Mr. Williams is keen to make a splash.The theme of his debut show, Mr. Williams said, will be “lovers.” The first inklings of his vision emerged in April, at a Virginia festival that Mr. Williams organizes called Something in the Water, for which Vuitton made merch. It was received coolly.Of potential negative criticism, Mr. Williams pleads equanimity. “I’m a student — students learn,” he said.Mr. Henson said he didn’t think Mr. Williams was expecting any “grace or favor” because of who he is. “He’s expecting even more criticism and harsh critique,” he said.Mr. Williams shrugged. “It’s not where my mind is, just because I think I err on the side of working with master artisans, and we’re just literally working on the details,” he said.Staying CuriousAn afternoon with Mr. Williams in creative director mode is a little bit like playing a first-person shooter. Requests pop in from unexpected directions, at erratic rhythms. Just when things get calm, someone emerges from around a corner with a mood board, or a vintage garment and a swatch of fabric it might be reimagined in. After being shown a hood with a novel but useful zipper, Mr. Williams nodded. “I don’t want anything to be just for aesthetics,” he said. “Everything has to have a real function.”For the second day in a row, he was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt by Human Made, this time underneath a soft black leather biker jacket, and his flared jeans were in a Damier pattern.A tailor brought out a mock-up of a double-breasted blazer for Mr. Williams to try on. One of the designers asked if he wanted “a very sartorial pocket” added to the design.“Sartorial,” Mr. Williams said. “Do you follow that guy on Instagram? The Sartorialist?”At the Louis Vuitton workshop in the days before his debut collection is unveiled. Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesFor his first collection, he is leaning heavily on the checkerboard Damier print but reworking it in clever ways — digital camo or, in Mr. Williams’s parlance, “damouflage,” and tweaking the colors away from the familiar browns and grays.“Every season it’s going to be a different colorway,” he said, likening the playfulness to Takashi Murakami’s neon monogram print during the Jacobs era. The soles of various shoes will be a modified Damier pattern. On a conference table were a pair of damoflage sweatsuits set aside for his parents (“My dad is a player,” he said.)Mr. Williams, who made waves in 2007 with his oversize purple crocodile Hermès Haut à courroies bag, is most tickled by the opportunity to innovate on the Speedy, which he is remaking in several primary colors, and also in an exaggerated, oversize silhouette. A yellow Speedy in meltingly soft leather sat on the pool table that serves as an impromptu work space in the atelier, almost slumping under its own very light weight.“I want to give you that same experience that you get when you go to Canal Street, a place that has appropriated the house for decades, right?” Mr. Williams said. “Let’s reverse it. Let’s get inspired by the fact that they’ll make some colorways that the house has never made. But then let’s actually make it the finest of leather.”The day before, Mr. Williams had taken a moment to chat about designing a custom look for Naomi Campbell, including a zipped sports bra and zipped miniskirt, all in monogrammed leather (“’60s vibes, go-go”), and debating skirt lengths. “It’ll work, but I don’t know if it’ll be as sexy,” he said.He also surveyed a pair of ship-shaped bag options, one steamer-like, one a bit shorter, and picked from various trim color and font options. “This seems to be the crispiest,” he said, pointing to a white trim. He held one bag in each hand, then handed them to Nigo, who stomped off down the office in a mock model walk.What Nigo did for Mr. Williams two decades ago, Mr. Williams is now doing for those who grew up admiring him.“Me and him have a 20-year difference in age and man, what that does for me at my age is like, oh, it’s still no ceilings,” Tyler said. “To see someone at his age with his milestones, with his résumé, to not only still strive for a new world, stay curious, look for something new and something to challenge himself and let his creativity bleed into something else aside from just a drum pattern. And then actually get it. He not only strived for and did it, but actually nailed it — it means so much to me.”Mr. Williams’s new designs include printed leather jerseys and rugbys, quilted denim, Mao-neck blazers and ghillie camo with LV logo cutouts. He was excited to walk to the back of the studio, where the footwear designers work, and go over some eccentric ideas: Mary Janes and bowling shoes, a stone-encrusted snowboard boot, a design that initially scanned as a soccer sneaker but is actually a hard-bottom shoe. “I ain’t even gonna lie,” he said. “I was trying to do that at Adidas for years.”A little earlier, he was in front of his window, where he’d set up a small studio, and while fiddling with his Keystation 88 — a keyboard and sound controller — he asked his engineer to cue up a new song, tentatively called “Chains ’n Whips,” that he was considering using as part of the show’s soundtrack. Over a fusillade of psych-rock guitar flourishes, Pusha T rapped along to a pointed line in the chorus: “Beat the system with chains and whips!”“That was made in this room,” Mr. Williams said. “We just start walking around and looking out this window and you just see all of this. I mean, we beating this system, bro.” More

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      Netflix Chronicles Byron Bay’s ‘Hot Instagrammers.’ Will Paradise Survive?

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      Tensions between protecting and capitalizing on the image of the famous Australian beach town have exploded over a new reality show.BYRON BAY, Australia — The moral quandaries of life as an Instagram influencer in the famously idyllic town of Byron Bay are not lost on Ruby Tuesday Matthews.Ms. Matthews, 27, peddles more than vegan moisturizers, probiotic powders and conflict-free diamonds to her 228,000 followers. She is also selling an enviable lifestyle set against the backdrop of her Australian hometown’s crystalline coves and umbrellaed poolsides.It’s part of the image-making that has helped transform Byron Bay — for better or worse — from a sleepy beach town drawing surfers and hippies into a globally renowned destination for the affluent and digitally savvy.“I do kind of have moments where I’m like, ‘Am I exploiting this town that I live in?” Ms. Matthews said recently as she sat at The Farm, a sprawling agritourism enterprise that embodies the town’s wellness ethos. “But at the same time, it’s my job. It puts food on the table for my children.”The tensions between leveraging and protecting Byron Bay’s reputation, always simmering in this age of entrepreneurial social media, exploded last month when Netflix announced plans for a reality show, “Byron Baes,” that will follow “hot Instagrammers living their best lives.”Local residents said the show would be a tawdry misrepresentation of the town and demanded that Netflix cancel the project. One woman started a petition drive that has gathered more than 9,000 signatures and organized a “paddle out” — a surfer’s memorial usually reserved for commemorating deaths — in revolt.Byron Bay is the most expensive place to live in Australia, with a median house price of $1.8 million.Mullumbimby, a town near Byron Bay. The announcement of the new show from Netflix has raised questions about who is entitled to capitalize on the cult of Byron Bay.Several store owners, many of whom have substantial Instagram presences, have refused permits that would allow Netflix to record on their premises. A number of influencers who were approached by the show also said they had decided not to take part. More