Pharrell Williams spends a lot of time in Paris these days as the Men’s Creative Director for Louis Vuitton, a role he took on in 2023, succeeding the late Virgil Abloh. Last week those duties included overseeing LVMH’s show Paris Fashion Week, where he debuted a new collab with fellow fashion fiend A$AP Rocky. Friday, with lots of big names in town due to Fashion Week, French president and Ultra Vomit fan Emmanuel Macron took the chance to knight Pharrell.
Pharrell received the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest national merit, in a ceremony in the Winter Garden of the Élysée Palace. Those present included Pharrell’s fellow music luminaries like Future, Pusha T, and Pedro Winter aka Busy P, as well as Louis Vuitton CEO Bernard Arnault and UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay. According to Vanity Fair, Macron praised Pharrell for his “rare ability to turn the wildest ideas into reality.”
Macron also used the occasion to get in a dig at Donald Trump and his faux-United Nations, the Board of Peace:
It is a great honor to have you here. Especially in this special week which was very demanding for the relationship between France and the U.S. Dear Pharrell, you are by yourself our personal Board of Peace, because you always bring peace, solace, and hope in France, in America, in the whole world, wherever your music is heard.
Another quote summarizing:
Dear Pharrell, listing all your achievements would be impossible: you have the rare ability to live a thousand passions within a single lifetime. You managed to do so because you are incredibly talented, but also thanks to your steadfast discipline that could intimidate even an Olympic athlete. A five a.m. wake-up call. Five hundred sit-ups. Meditation. A hot bath, a cold shower—and sometimes even a burst of songwriting in the bathroom itself.
Macron has been in Pharrell’s orbit for years. In 2023, he snapped a photo of Pharrell and BLACKPINK together, and Pharrell joined the president’s wife Brigitte Macron in last week’s Pièces Jaunes concert.
