Pharrell Williams Has Always Embodied This Year's Met Gala Theme

0:28I'm Chloe Mel. Choma spoke to Pharrell for this month's cover story. Anything that you always take away from interviewing Pharrell that stands out to you? I'm always sort of fascinated by the way he is able to kind of switch gears in his brain and just the sort of bigness of his thinking and his imagination. Like he's always kind of thinking beyond this world. Yeah. I like that. And there's sort of audaciousness of that. He's always thinking, well, how can we do X? You know, how can we push it further his energy is always it is always kind of infectious and inspiring yeah you know um and it doesn't hurt when you walk in on him and he's like making a song you know like he is like our quincey jones like he's so i mean his his influence on culture from all angles is just so impressive so it's it's quite intimidating if i'm honest yeah but he seems really excited to get to the first Monday in May and I can't wait to see what he'll be wearing.

1:27I need to know what he's wearing. He gave nothing away. I asked him that in the interview and he gave nothing away. He's just like, I'm excited to wear it. Okay. Well, here is our interview with the one and only Pharrell.

1:43Congratulations on your role as a Met Gala co-chair and obviously for the fabulous May issue. How are you doing? I'm grateful. Well, it looks amazing and I have to say, we had four incredible May issue covers, Coleman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, and yourself. But yours was, I have to say, a special situation with the indomitable Henry Taylor painting it. How did that come about? I know that he's a longtime love of yours. I want to say Anna asked me what I thought about it. And I was like, well, yeah, obviously, I want the painting. Exactly. I was going to say, where is this painting going to end up?

2:22Because it's so fab. Hopefully it's en route. Wow. Amazing. I just thought it would be interesting for it to be an African-American, world-renowned, celebrated painter. It's awesome. And I'm honored to be his subject. Did you help him choose sort of what look you'd be wearing? Did you sit for a portrait? What was the process? That's not how Henry works. You know, Henry, he has his own ideas about how he wants to do things and what he wants to communicate. And I think we're all just very lucky participants and or bystanders. And you've collaborated together before for Vuitton? Yes, I was buying a painting of his and I just liked his work and I thought it would be interesting for him to come and do something at the house.

3:12And what I didn't know that, you know, a couple of years before then, he had actually already done like a one-off thing with the brand. But here I wanted to make what he does and who he is more visible and, you know, really help put his name in lights as much as we could contribute to it. So this year's theme is obviously tailored for you. And it's inspired by the Institute's exhibit, Superfine Tailoring Black Style. And I know we've talked a lot in our interview, and I wish everybody could have eased off on that conversation because it was such a joy. I'll paint the picture for everyone. I walked in on Pharrell singing, composing work for John Legend, which was such a magical experience to see Pharrell at work, kind of to see how he multitasks.

4:02So that was a wonderful moment. And we were talking a bit about the gala. It's not your first time co-chairing, but I wanted to ask you a little bit about what this New Year's theme means to you. Well, I think that it is, first of all, we're also very thankful to Anna. But I'll never forget right after my first show, she just said, you know, I want you to co-chair the Met Gala in 25. And this was in 23. Wow. Right after my show. She was like, you know, we had breakfast over at the Ritz, as we usually do. Whenever she comes in town and like, you know, we talk about a whole host of things. And then at that particular time, that's what she said to me.

4:50She was like, I want you to host it, but you got to keep it secret. Don't tell anybody. And I'm like, what's the theme? She says, I wanted to be based on dandyism. And I was like, okay, wow. Because that's what my whole, you know, it's one of the things that I brought to Vuitton when I got there. I knew I wanted to, you know, celebrate Dandy, you know, people who walked a walk, who really lived that life of like attention to detail and high sophisticated taste buds, you know. And so when she said that to me, I was like, oh, this is great. Like, this is going to be amazing. And the interim between then and now, it has been like this really amazing journey since then.

5:33They involved Monica Miller and who brought in the book Superfine. It's just turned into this whole thing. And you think about like the other co-chairs, the cast of characters, it's just grown. And I'm just honored because she said that to me after my show, you know, like I'm like, OK, not, you know, for my first show, it must be I must be doing something right. You know, yeah. The views on that show was like the most viewed fashion show ever. Wow. Of all time. Choma and I interviewed Will Welch the morning after because he had been there. Yeah. And he was saying that it just he had never had an experience at men's week when there had been a moment that felt like the entire world was watching.

6:18And that was really unique. It was crazy. For I have a question. You're having breakfast with Anna at the Ritz. It's 2023. And she says, I want the Met exhibition to be focused on dandyism. When you hear that word, what does it mean to you? What does it sort of evoke in you personally? How would you describe it to someone who maybe doesn't have a familiarity with it? One who is very accustomed to the sport of getting dressed. That's a great way to put it. The sport of knowing where you're going, what the climate is like, and what the temperature is. That's a sport. And, you know, between all of those details is the attention to the very specific things and the appreciation of those things.

7:13That's dandyism. And living that life, you know, the sport of getting dressed, that's dandyism. and when things are very well done and very well considered and sophisticated in their execution well then that is dandy like yeah and i mean i'm looking at you now and i always have to ask about your fit because you you dress with such intentionality and everything is nothing looks like it's nothing is try hard but everything is intentional tell us about like where are you where are you speaking from and like what inspired your look today well this is live from dubai Oh, wow. Wow. We just came in here from the boat to do this interview because this is like super important.

7:59Thank you. Thank you. But this is like a, you know, a saturated cranberry human made hat. This is a polo. This is Gamma General. You can find both of these pieces in the store, maybe in more subtle colors. You can see the Damier in here, but in person, this reads as just tone on tone. So you can't really see the Damier. But because of the screen and the fact that we're on a computer or we're zooming, you're able to read that. So I think it's easier for you to see. And then, you know, all of the buttons are pearl. I love the pearl buttons. The pearl buttons might be my favorite detail. And for people who may not know, the Damier is the classic Vuitton checkerboard, sort of tone-on-tone checkerboard that you're right.

8:46It really does read well on screen. And I bet that in person it's a little bit more subtle. Yeah. What are you doing in Dubai, if I may ask? You know what? It was just my 52nd lap around the sun. Oh, happy birthday. Happy lap around the sun. Yeah, thank you. 52 laps. So I just wanted to come here because I'm, you know, working with the government here and we're doing like some really interesting, awesome things. So I figured I would meet and treat myself at the same time.

9:20We'll be back with more Pharrell right after a quick break.

9:58Thank you. this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

10:18It must be fun to sort of like change hats all the time and be doing different creative pursuits. Man, listen, I am honored. I am so honored. I'm so honored that I get to do what I actually really love. And I want this for everyone. I do. I really do. Man, do what you love. Find a vocation connected to something that you love. You will show up with a smile on your face every day and you'll be the last person that leaves the job every day when everyone's telling you, can we just please go home? You will be the last person. That is like great because there's so many people who make so much more money, but they hate their lives.

10:56It's like, what's the point, of all that money and all that materiality and superficiality if you can't enjoy yourself. It's like, man, don't think about the money. Think about the passion and find a vocation connected to it. And if you can do that, I promise you, man, that is the recipe for a good, happy life. Okay. I'm very inspired by that, but I also have questions. How do you actually fit all those things in your day? I'm just curious about how you're moving between different passions and things that you love doing because. It's a busy life. What I don't do is I don't have a lot of like hangout time.

11:38OK. Like I don't hang out. I don't do a lot of hanging out. I do a lot of working. OK. I do a lot of researching. But I do it with people who are like better than me, smarter than me. So I'm always learning and I'm always having fun. So, yeah, I might call the shots. But I want to have people who are much smarter than me. It's like running track. It's like you get faster by running with people who are faster than you. So it's the same thing with the mental muscle. It's the same thing. It's a muscle, right? You get faster and your processing gets better and more comprehensive when you're around people who have more comprehensive thoughts and who are faster and who are quicker and more efficient and have efficient ways of doing things.

12:20That's what I spend my time doing. I want to spend my time being better. Circling the sun 50 times, my whole thing is like, okay, for the next 50, all I want to do is be better. I spent the first 50, I learned a lot, but I hung out and did a bunch of things that were cool. It was life and I lived it and I enjoyed it. But now It's about doubling down and tripling down and being the best individual that I can be. That's the reason why we spend so much time with Human Race. We're working on a lot of longevity things. Everything from patches that deliver vitamins to professional walking shoes to actual running through street running shoes.

13:10I'm super focused on that. Supplements. I know you work out and you have a mindfulness practice. I know. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. What does sort of like take us through the things? What's the morning routine? Yeah, what's the morning? I know this morning routine, actually. It's very early. Very early. I wake up at four. Okay. I start working out. I work out at five. What happens from four to five, if I may ask? Four to five, you're waking up. Okay. I read pretty much, watch the news. and just keeping up with what's going on and the different various sectors like art and things that just like, you know, things that just like make my world turn.

13:53And, you know, I check up on these things and just get like a daily calibration of what's happening. And then at five o 'clock, I train like, you know, I've got a five minute plank. I take an hour long, super hot bath. That's where you sweat. Like that's like imperative to me. and then around six, I'm like taking a shower and getting ready. You know, I'm going to see my kids right around seven before they leave for school. And then I'm over at Vitan somewhere between eight and nine, sometimes at eight. And sometimes I'm there like right at nine and I don't stop until I leave at around seven and I either have dinner out or I have dinner at the house, but I'm in bed by 9, 9.30 and I'm snoring by 10.30 and then I'm back up at 4 o 'clock in the morning.

14:42That's what I do. Wait, I have a question and I'm dying to know. Do you listen to music when you work out or what gets you in the kind of mood for working out? When I'm planking, I use a stopwatch because that's what keeps me going. I mean, because five minutes is like... That's a crazy plank. Five minutes? That's not like... My stomach hurts. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's just that's the way I count it down. That's what helps me. So no music. No, no music. I'm fascinated by going straight into a really hot bath as part of the workout practice. I think that makes a lot of sense. But that's the long.

15:17Oh, you burn. Yeah, you burn. You burn so much. You're sweating. You definitely lose like four or five pounds of like water weight right then and there because you're sweating. Yeah, it's totally worth it. It's like, it's great. And it helps you, you know, with your definition. And if you care about definition, I do. I'm a little vain. I'm a little vain when it comes to that. I think I do. You know? Yeah. I love definition. And when I don't get it, it's a real problem. I will cut back. I will cut back. Like right now, I'm pescatarian for a year straight just because I like to challenge myself with things here and there.

15:56And the other thing that I negated to say is when I'm working, I fast. So I only really eat once a day. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. So I just eat at like seven o 'clock at night. And maybe on the weekends, I may have lunch just to have it with my kids. But most of the time I'm fasting, you know, for for 24 hours. Wow. Well, I'm curious what I mean, you moved your whole family to Paris two years ago. what is their what is your routine with them like in Paris it's different but you know I can't complain you know we still have our place in Miami and whenever we have time off we often go down there for a week or two weeks or whatever you know the kids love it but you know this is just Paris is the center of the earth for me right now and not just Louis Vuitton but just in general Like I got a lot of business there, you know, human race is there, human race is there in Paris, it's in Italy, you know, it's going to be in Korea at the same time.

16:57Like just, there's just, we're more global citizens than anything right now. You know, I'm always going to be American and I'm always going to love America and America's off the chain right now, but all good. You know, it is what it is. But I, you know, I'm always going to be American like America made me. But I know that I'm a child of the planet now. I mean, there were so many highlights of our conversation, but there was one quote that really, really stuck with me that was actually in the piece. And it was like when you said, I wanted to feel, and this is talking specifically about the Met Gala, I wanted to feel like the most epic night of power, a reflection of black resiliency in a world that continues to be colonized.

17:41We also spoke about Kendrick Lamar and about the Super Bowl. And I just kind of wanted to talk to you about specifically about what that night will mean and what impact you want it to have. It's going to be a very impactful, beautiful night where we celebrate, you know, the color black. We celebrate the things that come from that color. We celebrate the mentality. We celebrate the plight. We celebrate the progress and the success. And we celebrate the potential. and we see it in all different you know forms right from authors to architects to artists to academics to amazing and athletes all a words um but yeah that's what that night is all about it's like the best of the best top of the top top of the top best of the best that's the that's what i want it to feel like and i want those photos to feel.

18:41I want the viewer to feel that power. If Anna's going to give us the platform, we got to make great usage of it. And that's what that night is going to be. The manifestation of using the platform to celebrate us and all of our enthusiasts, right? That means people who are not necessarily Black, but just like, you know, enthusiasts of the Black culture and enthusiasts of the black color and enthusiasts of the everything that has something to do with black and brown.

19:17So we're going to take a quick break right now. We'll be back in a moment.

19:29This week on the political scene from The New Yorker, Trump's rupture in the world order. Europe caught between two adversarial great powers. That's basically dialing back the clock to not only pre-World War II, but really it's a pre-20th century view of the world. And I would say it's a world of permanent insecurity that we're looking at. Join me, Evan Osnos, and my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser every Friday on The Political Scene, available wherever you get your podcasts.

20:07This is your sixth Met Gala. And as we said, second co-chairing. Do you have a memory from your first time you went? Anything that surprised you about the event? I just thought it was a powerful room. You know, it was the who's who. And especially when like the themes, when people are, when people adhere to the themes in a good way. Because sometimes like it'd be a little janky and weird, you know, like people be doing a little too much. You know, they end up coming there looking like, you know, Teletubby meets Yo Gabba Gabba meets Sesame Street. And they'd be dead serious. Like they really doing something.

20:46It's like, dude, you know, and that stuff doesn't age well either. You know, but when there are years when people have like the right interpretations, it's like a really nice room to be in because it's great people, great sophisticated taste buds. But I think what Anna does really well is that it's always people with generally good taste. Are there any themes or looks on other people that stand out to you from years where you were like, damn, that looked amazing? I think Rihanna always just comes through with the blowtorch. Rocky too, Rocky too. You know, that Carl homage was crazy. Yeah, that was great.

21:28But I think those two, they come through with the blowtorch. They come set everything on fire. I love talking to you about your life growing up in Virginia Beach and that quote about feeling like a firefly in a preserved jar and this idea that your imagination kind of like was more outsized than, you know, where you were. And also in Piece by Piece, when you talk about, you talk about your grandmother actually recognizing that you had this talent or that you were going to be someone in this world. Like, tell us a bit about what it was like to sort of like have that bigger vision of yourself when you were younger.

22:08I didn't have that bigger vision of myself. I thought everybody saw things the same way. I didn't realize that something was different until things just started going in a way for me that I couldn't explain anymore. That's when I was like, oh, something's happening and something is different. And I don't know what this is and I don't know how long it lasts, but I want to do it forever. I think it's fun. That was it. I just stayed focused on the music and like the music, the music's taken me here. It's like being on a sailboat, but not steering, allowing the winds and the steering of the boat to be led by fate.

22:45and what is written, but just keeping your head down and doing the work. And you look up, one day you're in this country. One day you look up, and one day you're in that country. It's like, that's literally what happened. I wish I could say that I charted all this, but I didn't chart any of this. I am here by the grace of God. The universe saw it fit. And for anybody that doesn't believe in God, that's totally cool, because the universe for me is God. And if I can't say that I am in control of this, whatever the odds are, I want to believe that the universe has some order and the odds. And this is the way that it's landed for me.

23:26These are all the places that I've been able to see and frequent. It's harder to explain it any other way than I don't have the answers. There's nothing more divine than the ubiquitous nature of the universe. It is ever-expanding and it is infinite. There's no other way to describe divine order. I wonder about your next menswear collection for Vuitton, the divine order of that. Yes, nice segue. Any inspirations you're sort of charting right now, things that are guiding you that you can share with us? I can't do it. Okay. I wonder if there's any colleagues or fellow fashion designers whose work you are loving recently, who you've been sort of excited by and following.

24:17Super excited for Matthew Blase over at Chanel. I think he's going to crush it. Right. And I think he's going to shake the business up so great. And I think that they're going to give him all the resources to do that. And I think it's going to be great. I love what he does. I'm very, very happy for my brother Jonathan Anderson going over to Dior. He's going to crush, crush. I mean, we're all fans of Loewe, and it's going to be interesting to see where that goes after he leaves because he left an indelible mark. But Jonathan Anderson is going to crush it over at Dior. Crush. I am very excited to see what Demna does over at Gucci with my brother Stefano Cantino.

25:00Stefano is a brilliant marketer. So the fact that like this guy that comes from like marketing and communications is actually the CEO of a house is just one of the most brilliant things. And I think Mr. Pino did a really good job of casting the character of Stefano Cantino to be CEO over there. And Stefano was brilliant in his casting of Demna because Demna is going to crush it. And I cannot wait to see what he does. Cannot wait. I adore Martine Rose. I love her stuff. She's making Choma's Met look. We're very excited. Listen, she's the fucking best. She is hands down the best. Rei Kawakubo for me is just the deity.

25:52She's just like not even, just stratospheric. Like she's just something else. and it's only going to get better and better and better and better and better. And I'm very excited about something over there as well. Very excited. She just showed a collection that, I mean, everybody went. People were in tears. Yeah, I'm sure. She is the goat. Yeah. She is the goat. She is the goat's goat. She really is. You know what I mean? She really is. She's literally on the top of a mountain eating grass. She is the goat of goats. And, man, what she's up to these days is crazy, which you got to see. She's something else.

26:31And, of course, I love what, like, Nego is doing over at Kenzo. It's great. Like, I wear Kenzo all the time. And what he's doing at Human Made is, like, very crazy, too. I love the collab that you did with him for the last, your collection was amazing. It was great. It was great to see you work together. You were one of the few people who were very, very close to Carl and saw him work. And I'm sort of curious to know one memory, one thing that you learned from him that you maybe took forward into designing and creative directing Louis Vuitton. Carl was very theme-based and he always took his codes.

27:09He was very consistent with his codes. And I started wearing like pearls years and years and years ago, maybe like 30 years ago. But I also took a liking to Chanel because of Notorious B.I.G. always talking about baby bags by Chanel, you know, saying things like that. Like that just got me. And then seeing Lil' Kim in it and, you know, like and Mary, like that, like really made me pay attention to Chanel. And then I was like, well, you know what? I should wear it. Like I should wear something that I feel like I can pull off. And so I did. And that's what led me to knowing who Carl was and how he thought about fashion.

27:50And and then we developed a friendship and he would invite me by and eventually allow me to do, you know, the only collaboration they've ever done in the history of the brand, which was a capsule collection. It was crazy. That must have been. Coco Chanel liked a lot of pearls. So I felt like we had that in common. And so a lot of the pearl details that you see in all of my stuff, it's actually an homage to my reverence for both my reverence for pearls, which makes which I feel like is a genderless stone. But it's also an homage to like my big brother, you know, Carl, like he really opened the doors and really stamped me in fashion, both him and also Mark King of King Jacobs, who's still crushing it.