Dua Lipa, Callum Turner, and More Toast Pharrell Williams’ Tiffany Co. Titan Collection
On Tuesday night, Pharrell Williams welcomed a glittering crowd to a private dinner celebrating Titan, his hit collection of Tahitian pearl jewelry for Tiffany Co. In the Plaza Athenée’s main dining room, the multi-hyphenate superstar invited the culinary collective We Are Ona to orchestrate the menu and had tables arranged in a cross formation, a stylistic nod to his jewelry designs, for an intimate gathering of 40 or so guests. Among them: Tiffany Co. face Anya Taylor-Joy, Dua Lipa, Ashley Graham, Gabrielle Union and her husband, Dwayne Wade, Sarah Andelman, Lauren Santo Domingo, and former Tiffany Co. boss Alexandre Arnault and his wife, Géraldine. At the back of the room glistened an array of Titan jewels in black pearls and gold, artfully draped over an imposing antique buffet shrouded in meters of white fabric.
But the biggest display of Titan’s allure was on the guests. Ashley Graham was one of the first to arrive, dressed in a floaty black evening dress by Louis Gabriel Nouchi. “It’s straight off the runway,” she said as she wrestled with its train, hunting for the tiny finger loop the designer had added at her request. Of her jewelry profile, she added, “I am a stacker. I have 18 holes altogether – it’s, like, the more, the merrier for my ears. I love how Titan is hardcore meets soft—I could have worn, like, five more sets,” she said, adding, “I’ll have to call him about that.”
“It’s all I know,” the host offered about Titan, a collection that unfurls like his life story, from a housing project called Atlantis to his early record production company, The Neptunes, to mythology and the lustrous pearls, winking diamonds, and gleaming gold tridents eddying around the room. Alluding to his fascination with all manner of metals—be it gold and titanium or copper and brass—and gems, amulets, and charms with time-honored spiritual and wellness properties, Williams hinted that Titan is only just gathering momentum. “I’ve been making jewelry for 30 years,” he noted. “I’m always going to have a particular feeling about jewelry, knowing that there’s a medicinal property too, whether it’s the stone or the alloy or the way it’s set. What we have in common with the ancients is that it’s symbolic. It’s a real thing.”
A friend of nearly 20 years, Union, came dressed in archive Cavalli, a dress she said she picked “because it made me feel like a sexy 80s supermodel” and also because its gold claws played up her jewels. “Everything looks different through his eyes, and it’s awesome. It’s always going to elevate your life in some way.” She wasn’t just talking about William’s flair for jewels or clothes, she added. It’s about the City of Light itself.
“Most people lean into the romance of Paris, or the history, but he shows you this whole sexy side. He shows you the beauty standards that let you be a woman who eats, and who maybe doesn’t have a billion dollars, but there you are, still stepping and serving for the gods,” she said. “Pharrell creates his own version of what’s sexy or beautiful, and it just kind of broadens your horizons — if you allow it.”
Dressed in a black lace minidress and an imposing disc of a hat, both from Nina Ricci by Harris Reed, Taylor-Joy said, “I think that Pharrell approaches everything with so much thought. I wanted to wear something that felt Parisian, but that would let the necklace and earrings shine.” After couture week, the actress will be hitting red carpets everywhere for the release of The Gorge, directed by Scott Derrickson. “A genre-bending action love story movie,” she said. “We like to call it alternate programming for Valentine’s Day.” If her wardrobe is a work in progress, her jewelry is all set.
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Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com2/14Pharrell Williams, Helen Lasichanh