Kendrick Lamar’s Chanel Linkup Was Years in the Making
“I’m best-dressed moving forward,” Kendrick Lamar proclaimed on his 2023 track “The Hillbillies,” approximately one month after he appeared in head-to-toe Chanel at that spring’s Karl Lagerfeld-themed Met Gala. (Blink and you might have missed him—the rapper skipped the famed red-carpet steps.) As of this week, Lamar is now an official Chanel ambassador, and a star in the French luxury house’s spring eyewear campaign.
In the new campaign that dropped on Tuesday, Lamar poses in double-C shades alongside fellow brand ambassadors Lupita Nyong’o, Margaret Qualley, and Nana Komatsu.
“Chanel has a timeless legacy and that is always something I can get behind,” Lamar said in a press statement. “Since they don’t make clothes for men, I knew it would have to be glasses.”
Not that Chanel not making “clothes for men” has necessarily stopped Lamar—or a host of other famous fellas—from wearing the label. After the 2023 Met Gala, Lamar and his creative partner, Dave Free, designed a sparkling set piece and produced a teaser film for Chanel’s spring 2024 couture show, which Qualley opened. During the show, Lamar, wearing a checkered tweed zip-up, sat in the front row next to Naomi Campbell. With designer Matthieu Blazy—renowned for his menswear at Bottega Veneta—now installed as creative director at Chanel, might we finally see the house make an official push into the men’s market?
