Pharrell Williams Takes on Tiffany, and Talks Atlantis, Poseidon, and the Cowboy Effect

“Jewelry is the punctuation mark of a person.—Pharrell Williams” read a glowing sign on the tenth floor of The Landmark, Tiffany Co.’s glitzy mega store on Madison Avenue. The floor is usually reserved for private clients, and it’s designed as “the perfect apartment overlooking the park” (Central Park, that is). Last night, however, the breathtaking space played host to a celebratory dinner to launch Tiffany Titan, a collection designed by Williams.

Is anyone more booked than Pharrell? On Wednesday, the multi-hyphenate hosted yet another activation for yet another one of his endeavors—his auction platform Joopiter. Talk about getting mileage out of a New York trip.

“I feel like it’s been a long time coming,” said Williams of his partnership with Tiffany Co. That’s almost an understatement: Williams and his personal style have become part of Tiffany’s cultural footprint, it is the jewelry maker responsible for his famous diamond sunglasses, after all. “Once LVMH got involved, and once Alex [Alexandre Arnault], who I’ve known for almost two decades, got involved and saw that his whole thing was to reimagine it, I jumped at the opportunity of partnering and collaborating.”

Pharrell Williams.

Courtesy of Tiffany Co.

But despite his history with the brand, Williams didn’t self-reference, at least not too literally. “I find inspiration in things that don’t exist, and if they do exist, I use them in a completely different way,” said the designer. For his Tiffany Co. collection Williams looked at mythology, his own and the Greek’s, starting with a play on words related to his own personal history. The artist grew up in Atlantis, a neighborhood in Virginia Beach, which led him to the lost utopian civilization in Plato’s writings, and to Poseidon, its king. “I’ve always been obsessed with water and Poseidon, so a lot of the links that we use [in the jewelry] are inspired by the trident he would carry,” he explained.