Pharrell on Blurred Lines and Masculinity

Pharell Williams is a legend in music and in the fashion world. The artist works for Adidas, but more interestingly, he worked for Chanel. He’s the only celebrity ever to make collaboration with the iconic french house. We mostly know him for his music so here are some interesting quotes about his work and masculinity.

Pharrell gave an interview to the GQ magazine, There’s a lot of exciting projects he discussed, both past and future. One thing stands out – his song Blurred Lines from 2012. Pharrell explained: “I realized that there are men who use that same language when taking advantage of a woman, and it doesn’t matter that that’s not my behavior. Or the way I think about things. It just matters how it affects women. And I was like, Got it. I get it. Cool. My mind opened up to what was actually being said in the song and how it could make someone feel. Even though it wasn’t the majority, it didn’t matter. I cared what they were feeling too. I realized that we live in a chauvinist culture in our country.”

As a contrast, he mentioned worldwide phenomena: song Happy. “And then here comes Happy a record that I didn’t write for myself, that I ended up being on, that made people feel happy. I wrote that song for CeeLo. I don’t have the capacity to write that kind of song for myself. When I do songs for myself, they’re always too complicated, and too smart, with six bridges. Because I’m weird like that. But when I do stuff for other people, that allows me to channel things for them, and so the universe set up the perfect conditions to get me to write a song like that. That made me cry. It literally made me cry.”

Pharrell is a feminist, plain and simple. He believes in women and their struggles. “I just read the Declaration of Independence the other day and my jaw dropped.  Referring to men, they use the term mankind. Well, what about women? And they talk about the transgressions of the king at the time, and they made reference to how he tried to stop their foreign trade.”

And finally, we got to fashion. The artist loves to wear both pieces from men’s and women’s collection. Pharrell had a specially made Hermes Birkin in purple. Why? He liked it! But he has some boundaries: ” I liked something, and I put it on. Then the philosophy came behind it. And I do have my lines. Like, I can’t wear no skirt. Nor am I interested in wearing a blouse. That’s not my deal. But things that are for women that I feel will look good on me—that I like—I will wear.” And that is how it’s supposed to be!