Pharrell Williams, the creative director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear line, is a true multi-hyphenate. Designer, musician, producer – and, as of this evening, architect, having revealed a ‘timeless future living concept’ in the middle of his A/W 2026 runway show for the Parisian house. It was presented in a specially constructed show space next to Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne, having also been teased on Instagram before the show (a series of clips showed architectural models and plans, captioned with ‘building the future’)
The building is a collaboration with Shinji Hamauzu’s Tokyo-based Not a Hotel, a company which has created a series of vacation homes across Japan, which are architect-designed and sold by fractional ownership, rather than the typical renting of rooms (‘it was important to signify that we were completely different from your regular hotel,’ Hamauzu told Wallpaper* when he was awarded a 2023 Design Award for the project). In February last year, Williams and his close collaborator Nigo were announced as ‘investors and creative advisors’ for the company, with several projects in the works.
The building itself is titled ‘Drophaus’, named for the way it finds inspiration in a droplet of water. Compressed glass walls mimic a water drop; the effect, says Williams, is that the lines between the home and the garden are blurred (in the show set, it was surrounded by Japanese-style terraces and long grasses). He says that the living space is one of an ‘outsider’s design mindset’, which is about ‘reimagining disciplines around feeling, function and cultural relevance’.
‘I grew up around water, I’m drawn to it, I build and create my best work close to it. Drophaus is based on a water drop, so if you stand back and take the roof and the ceiling off, it’s just a drop,’ Williams tells Wallpaper*. ‘If I can’t live in water, this is the closest thing. Drophaus is my vision of the future – something that makes sense today or 20 years from now because it’s built on function, savoir-faire and real human need. I’m not an architect. I’m a solution builder.’
True to this multidisciplinary approach, Drophaus also features ‘Homework’, a new furniture series whereby each object has ‘ten per cent imperfection’ – whether in their irregular forms or undulating textured surfaces. Williams says he designed them to emphasise this as a place for living: reflecting this, the invite for the show was a pair of leather slippers imprinted with the show’s date. And, at the start of the show, a trio of models explored the home, before walking the grass-covered runway.
Scored by a live choir, the collection explored themes of timelessness: Williams said that these were pieces designed to ‘endure rather than expire’. This was largely done through fabrication: menswear archetypes – from the trench coat and the double-breasted suit to classic workwear – were reimagined through experiments in material, from ‘houndstooth’ and ‘herringbone’ that were actually reflective technical yarns to crystal embroidery designed to evoke droplets of water,