Everything must go – Pharrell Williams is selling off his legacy

In a whitewashed loft apartment in lower Manhattan, there is a man with his hands in the air. He gestured to the imaginary items that he was using to describe his creative process. Maybe this goes here.

He shepherds the pieces into a formation. It is similar to a video game. His arms are adorned with gold bracelets and a complicated looking watch. "You're just sculpting ideas."

sculpting ideas has become a trademark for one of the greatest innovators in modern popular culture. Over more than three decades of prolific output, Williams has helped to alter the course of both music and fashion, and in doing so has brought about the fusion of the two. We are going to meet today because he has been so prolific. While Williams's musical contributions can be contained within the infinite capacity of the streaming ether, his 20 years' worth of fashion collaborations and creations are much more cumbersome.

Williams and I are sitting on a couch talking about how to get rid of them all. He gestured around the room, where dozens of his designs are arrayed, and his business manager said, "Hey, at this point, you have 11 different storage units!"

Rather than selling the fruits of his journey through the fashion world on an existing auction platform, he has assembled a team to create a new one. His cast-offs, most of which have had some creative input from him, will launch the site when it goes live this month; later, it will expand to sell other curators' collections as part of a "high-touch, white-glove" operation. In the future, it will have a philanthropic side to it.

Fashion and music is like time and space, you can’t have one without the other

He sees the fragmented current landscape of high-end auction platforms, which range from prestige heritage brands such as Christie's to newcomers like Reluxe and Depop, as a problem that he wants to address. Furniture will not be sold on StockX. He says that the platform that specializes in sneakers and streetwear is what he is talking about. I will not sell 20-plus-carat diamond rings on The Real Real.

One of the mental benefits of having a massive clear out is the ability to let stories go. He encourages me to look up the astrological meanings of the planet Jupiter. Good fortune and higher learning are two things I do.

The effect is of a king surrounded by long-accumulated treasures when he leans back on the couch. He says that he is the son of a pharaoh and that he has two diamond necklaces around his neck. I want to know what drew him to the world of fashion despite the fact that he already had a successful music career. Williams says that fashion and music are like time and space. Even Mozart wore something.

Williams has been a frontiersman if the past few decades of popular culture have been a journey into what was once considered the alternative. Nile Rodgers created a sound so irresistible that the musical universe was forced to bend around it in the 70s. With an eerie, percussive production style (Williams has cited Carl Sagan's 1980s television series Cosmos as an inspiration), he and Hugo built the chassis for every era- defining record from "Drop It Like It's Hot" to "Hollaback"

Nigo, the artistic director of Kenzo, who has collaborated with Williams on the brands Billionaire Boys Club, said that whenever there is a collection of the best songs of the era, it will most likely be his songs.

Williams was one of several black artists who made inroads into the fashion establishment, striking high-profile collaboration deals with houses such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton, and appearing on the cover of American Vogue. To think of Williams is to think of his most famous looks, such as the huge hat he wore to the Grammys, or the tiny diamond-encrusted sunglasses that are the product of a recent collaboration with Tiffany & Co.

Today, Williams' teenage son Rocket potters around the room taking videos with a handheld camera, surrounded by scattered nuggets from his father's life in fashion: the Moncler vest from 2010 draped over another couch to our left, featuring a print by a Japanese artist.

It was a long time coming, says Williams of fashion's embrace of hip-hop culture that reached its apotheosis with Abloh's appointment at Louis Vuitton. He describes hip-hop as a form of rebellion and radical expression in a very culturally suppressive system. He shook his head and said he was uncomfortable.

Woke scares people but, damn, I’d rather be woke than asleep

One of hip-hop's elder statesmen is 49-year-old Williams. The aura of a man who has lived through the excesses of the business and come out the other side is similar to that of Jay-Z. He says that his early years in music and the styling that came with them came from his big brother Jay-Z and his father. It was difficult for them to get in, so they acted all the way up, in the most luxurious way that they could. I was braggadocious at times when I tried to keep up with them.

The braggadocio reached its zenith with the mega-hit, "Blurred Lines". Williams distanced himself from the song after it was criticized for its misogynistic video and lyrics. He said: "My mind opened up to what was actually being said in the song and how it could make someone feel."

It is possible that the decision of a man who no longer wants or needs to be surrounded by his past is represented by Joopiter. He sees himself as a part of a movement that is pushing both music and fashion. He says that he and his friends are helping to get some of the old spirits to wake up. I would rather be woken than sleep.

Williams' fingerprints are all over the place. His influence is visible in a new generation of stars, from the boisterously charismatic Tyler, the Creator to the fashion savant A$APRocky. Hans Zimmer, the film score composer who worked with Williams on the soundtrack to Despicable Me 2, says that he is singular. He connects the music with the fashion and that's what I like about him.

Williams has survived the constant change of musical tastes and the shift to new forms of output that are no longer constrained to traditional album structures or cycles. The video for his song "Cash In Cash Out" featuring Tyler, the Creator and 21 Savage has more than 16 million views on the video sharing website.

He says that people listen to pop music and only get a couple of songs. The song is over in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. You would be a minute in before you heard the first word. He insists that the success of any song is the result of so many variables that it is not possible to predict what will be a hit. He says that there are so many genius songs out there that he and I have never heard or will never hear. That is not humility.

Williams has a lot of business interests. The father of four is juggling an array of extra-musical ventures, including skincare brand Humanrace and educational non-profit Yellow, though for now he insists his focus is on Joopiter. He dodged the question of if that chapter involves working on the ninth studio album by saying, "let's get through this first."

Each item in the collection evokes a moment in the artist's life. He has a jacket with the initials of his high school on it. I wonder if he will miss the pieces. Williams seemed notbothered. He shrugged and said that he was born without it. I won't have it when I die.