Justin Timberlake Debuts a Levi’s Collaboration That Is Really “Just Justin”
Justin Timberlake x Levi's Lookbook
Justin Timberlake knows all the numbers. 32 million albums sold. 19 top 10 singles. 10 Grammys, four Emmys. One iconic American Music Awards outfit. Here’s a new one: JT and I are about 4,625 miles from his hometown in Millington, Tennessee. We’re standing, glazed in a thin layer of midsummer sweat, on the rooftop patio of an artsy apartment in Paris’s Montmartre area. He wants to tell me, to tell the hundred or so people that have amassed from around the world, about his new collaboration with Levi’s called Fresh Leaves. It’s July 2, and my colleagues are furiously typing on their laptops and phones about the couture shows happening a couple minutes away in the Grand Palais and the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild. I receive about 17 emails, texts, and DMs from them wondering: What am I doing over here with Justin Timberlake?
And then about 231 more: What is Justin Timberlake really like?
If you’ve only clicked on this article because you neeeeeeed to know the answer: He looks strangely, perfectly, and exactly like Justin Timberlake. He doesn’t make a lot of eye contact, but when he does, his eyes are hesitant and Icelandic ice blue. He talks in a relaxed cadence punctuated by micro-gestures of his arms and sometimes his whole body, like shorthands of the dance moves he glides through on stage. Here, in the scenery of a faux garden surrounded by people watching him watch me, these small tics make him seem like a great sleight-of-hand artist pulling off a magic trick.
It’s an apt metaphor for a guy who has spent the majority of his life performing in the public eye. At 12 he was a Mickey Mouse Club kid; age 17, a peroxide-bottle boybander; age 22, a Pharrell and Timbaland accomplice with low-rise jeans and the titillating delivery of “I’ll have you naked by the end of this song” that haunted a generation’s teen dreams. There’s also been the chummy lovable comedic sideman-turned-BFF to Jimmy Fallon and the SNL gang, the polished actor in a Cohen brothers film, the smiling dapper red carpet regular with his pristinely beautiful and talented wife Jessica Biel.
Soul searching isn’t a term often applied to male celebrities, especially those of Timberlake’s platinum status, but after a career of being all these people, he seems to now just want to be himself. Can he even remember a time before being famous? The way he speaks of it seems, actually, to be the time he remembers best, warmest: A kid from Tennessee who would race with his best friend to get the newest Jordans and customize them to their liking, who ran through endless grassy backyards, who cherished his grandfather’s flannels. Those pre-fame years are what spurred Timberlake’s first foray into denim, his William Rast collection with that BFF, Trace Alaya. It’s the source of this Levi’s collab too. “This Levi’s collection is my attempt to share some of my experiences with fans,” he says.
When he talks about partnering with Levi’s, he mentions that they are not only iconic in the American sense but that they represent a high quality and innovation with an accessible edge. In the collection, Timberlake has rethought the staples of the Levi’s core offering: the trucker jacket, the shearling coat, the perfect 501 jean, the flannel, obviously. He talks about jeans as being “like art,” name-checking KAWS as an artist making things worth coveting, and so his take on essential Americana has a sort of Pop sensibility. (When he bikes through the forest he’s wearing Sacai x NYT hoodie and it’s a Dutch forest, ok?) The jeans, a tapered 501 cropped to hit just above the tops of your Timberlake x Jordan 3 JTHs, are laser printed with a leaf pattern and camouflage. The red-and-black flannels are actually hoodies. The jackets are extra long to cut a slim silhouette. It’s all clothing you could imagine Timberlake wearing, especially in the Man of the Woods album era. It’s also the sort of clothing women like me would buy for their stylish but not trendy boyfriends and husbands, nicer than average but not risky. Priced from $48 to $148, we can all afford it, too.
Another number: 24 hours after we engage in our 15-minute approved hangout, JT takes the stage at Paris’s AccorHotels Arena. (The wristbands for VIPs are, predictably, green-and-black-flannel print.) About 24 seconds into his performance, the stadium is drenched: 1. Because the French do not believe in air conditioning and 2. Because Timberlake is such a compelling multi-hyphenate that he can make even the sang froid French dance and get giddy. It’s easily one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to, a replay of the hits and a slow serenade of the new, conducted by a dude who dials it up to 11, unflinching, for almost two hours.
Too many Heinekens and too few hours later, the hotel phone rings to tell me that my car to the airport is leaving without me. I ball up my nice clothes in my suitcase and manage to make it to Charles de Gaulle in a size XL Justin Timberlake x Heron Preston tee, busted Vans, and my boyfriend’s shredded up Levi’s jeans from his own teenage years. It’s the way I dress when I’m home alone, dancing to Justin Timberlake songs in my kitchen, not when I’m in the presence of haute editors returning from a week of “The Couture,” capital T capital C. Whatever. I slink into my middle seat, tap into Lord of the Rings, and order a café americano très grande s’il vous plait. Sometimes, after all the artifice and pomp, you just want to be yourself, you know?
Justin Timberlake x Levi’s Fresh Leaves collection goes on sale on Nordstrom.com on October 4.
