Pharrell’s Hat Was There Too

Berlin Fashion Week in July operates on a specific register—warm enough to be uncomfortable, packed with people performing casual, full of events that are technically product launches but function more as expensive parties with a pretext. The adidas one that week, built around a new custom sneaker concept called #mizxflux, was exactly that: a pretext, and a decent one.

The idea was simple enough—photograph anything, upload it, have it printed across the upper of a ZX Flux. The sneaker as personal canvas. You could feel the meeting where someone pitched it. But the actual object, when you saw the samples, was genuinely interesting in the way simple ideas executed with conviction tend to be. Around 120 euros to wear your own photograph on your feet. Worse things have cost more.

Pharrell Williams was there. This was his peak ubiquity period—the hat era, the "Happy" era, the man was seemingly at every event on earth simultaneously, and yet his presence still registered as an event in the room. His entourage was equally committed to their headwear. There were burgers, cold beer, bloggers whose names all seemed to blend into each other after the second drink. A room full of people who felt vaguely familiar without you being able to say exactly why. Standard Fashion Week physics.