There are names in fashion that even in the world of social media —and within the celebrity culture of worshiping fashion designers as A-list stars, have yet to receive their flowers, acknowledgments, and have their full story told. That is the case for Virgil Abloh, a Black man from Rockford, Illinois, who studied engineer and architecture and became a DJ, a designer, an entrepreneur, and an excellent ambassador of consuming and perceiving fashion not just from its design elements, but also from its marketing, branding, and social constructions around it.
Virgil Abloh is the creative mind behind the iconic Serena Williams tutu dress, the stunning Louis Vuitton harness vest that Timothée Chalamet and Michael B. Jordan wore to red carpet events in 2019, and Hailey Bieber’s wedding dress.
Virgil Abloh passed away when he was 41 years old due to a battle with cardiac angiosarcoma, a rare type of cancer, but Abloh’s path building the Off White empire, a historically successful collaboration with Nike, and leading Louis Vuitton menswear collections is a fascinating story that inspires and helps us understand better the merge of luxury fashion and streetwear.
That's what the latest book by Washington Post senior critic-at-large and fashion journalist Robin Givhan is all about. Make it Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh. I spoke with her about this book and her insights researching and covering Virgil's work for several years.
Givhan tells the story of Virgil Abloh not just from the facts of where and when he was born and where he grew up, but what he stood for and what he wanted to communicate with the work he was doing. A quote from the book reads "A Black man, a son of immigrants, didn't simply lay claim to the American dream. He announced that the dream was more valuable because of his contribution to it.”
"I really felt like that was something that spoke to the way that Virgil moved through his professional life, with a sense of curiosity and confidence, but never hubris. Confident of what he had to contribute, and confident that he could make a place for himself. Givhan explains.
But I also feel he was working on all of this for a long time. It's been more than 10 years now. And yet, I feel like that sentiment just speaks so deeply to the current times. It came out of this project that he had done where he had purchased dead stock, Ralph Lauren rugby shirts, and he had printed his own logo on those shirts. And this preceded his work for Off White, and it certainly preceded his work at Louis Vuitton, and then he sold those shirts for an exorbitant amount. And some people recoiled and just thought: “What is this madness? He didn't actually make the shirts!”. Why is he selling them for so much more? But what I loved is that he had this idea that this Ralph Lauren shirt was worth X amount, and that shirt and brand were so communicative of what we think of the traditional American dream. I love that he felt that by adding his own element to that, by sort of mixing it into the dream, the dream was that much more interesting and that much more valuable. And I think that's something that we need to remember.
As an alumni from design school, I learned to think about t-shirts of something that doesn’t have a lot of design, that a lot of startups start with. Essentially, to stay away from t-shirts! As I was reading through your pages I ran into some t-shirts, and then more and more t-shirts. I realized that it was not about the design of the t-shirt per se, it was more about seeing t-shirts as a blank canvas for what can become a cultural symbol. Can you speak more about that?
Yes. There are a lot of T-shirts in the book! I would say, don't unlearn this idea that there's not a lot of “design” that goes into a t-shirt, while I think that there are some T-shirts that are so subtly, beautifully crafted, that they stand apart and for reasons that you can't even quite put your finger on, like one white t shirt just looks and fits and feels better than another.
But that said, throughout the reporting, there was always this tension —I think, between the expertise of design versus the skill and savvy of marketing and branding. Even after spending well over a year with this book, and looking at Virgil's work, I still feel like the actual design was nowhere near as creative and interesting and powerful as the messaging that he wrapped around the design and what he wanted to say about luxury and about, who gets to be the tastemate makers. I don't think that this tension is resolved. It certainly isn't for me.
I think that to some degree the sort of classic design expertise that we think of and we connect with, like couture, for instance, that part of the industry that speaks to people who really have an understanding and an interest in the working buttonholes and the darts and the way that something is draped. I do feel like that is increasingly becoming more of a sector of the industry, as opposed to the defining character of the industry.
You spoke with members of the Abloh family, what other resources did you use for your research?
I certainly went through my own reporting that I had done over the years. His parents were gracious enough to speak to me for the book. I also talked to people who he worked with, who were part of his design community, and also people who he worked with outside of the world of fashion, but who were still deeply engaged with aesthetics —whether it was graphic design or architecture or fine arts, who also were able to really help me understand Virgil's contribution when it wasn't in a sort of classic fashion way. And, I also spent a lot of time with Virgil's own words. He was someone who was quite valuable, and he gave lots of lectures and speeches. He talked a lot about his method and the way that he thought about design and creativity.
It's always interesting to me when you talk to someone who gives you a little bit of insight into their own thinking —People who knew Virgil, who worked with Virgil and who knew him to hear their thoughts about how he impacted them. One of the quotes that I loved, or that I found just really interesting, came from Matthew Williams, whose friendship with Virgil goes way back. Matthew talked about how for Virgil, everything was kind of a prototype. He didn't get super precious about things, and he would just do his best, and then he would put it out there, and then he would move on to the next thing.
Part of that you see in the tremendous creative output that he had over the years. And you also see it in the fact that a lot of it is really uneven, kind of halfway done. But he also said that it was so freeing, in a way, because it meant that if everything was kind of a prototype, it meant that you were constantly in the process of getting better or trying something new, and it really gives you this permission to be adventurous and to take risks, because there is this sense that the thing that you're doing is not the end. There's always a next step. There's always another route. There's always another try. I think that was eye opening for me.
Make it Ours is not just a classic biography of Virgil Abloh. There are stories of other pioneers in fashion who truly helped pave the way for the context and the circumstances that allowed Virgil Abloh to lead Louis Vuitton and then be later succeeded by Pharrell. It is fascinating that these stories are also part of Make it Ours.
I knew that I didn't want to write the classic biography, "he was born on a cool Fall day in 1980". I really wanted it to be more thematic in the chronology. And so both Oswald (Boateng) and Edward (Buchanan), they preceded Virgil. I wanted them to fit into the chronology in that way — their impact on the fashion industry preceded Virgil's collaboration with Nike. And honestly, I wanted to talk to them, because when Virgil got the job at Vuitton, there was so much enthusiasm for the history that he was making and a couple of stories got a little hyperbolic: “He's the first Black person to ever be a creative director at a luxury house.” I had been covering the industry long enough to know certainly about Oswald and Edward and so I really wanted to know why didn't their historic moments resonate the way that Virgil's did. I remember Edward getting that job (Bottega Venneta's Creative Director), and people didn't make a big deal about it. The announcement vaguely happened. The shows were fairly well attended, but people weren't like glomming on. And I remember when Oswald was hired, and that was announced, and people thought it was interesting, but it didn't get blasted out way beyond the borders of fashion. And so I just wanted to figure out what that difference was, and what Virgil had in that moment that elevated him in a way that his predecessors had not.
You said that this book is about optimism. Why optimism?
When I started interviewing people about Virgil, almost every single person would start out talking about how nice he was, that he was such a good guy. And initially I thought it was just a lot of throat clearing before they got to the point. But increasingly, I realized that his sense, his kindness, that he was a genial guy. He was not a rebel who was here to, throw flamethrowers into the system, this really worked in his favor, and the fact that he always seemed to be willing to see a way where others might not have seen a path through; the fact that he was not quick to anger or necessarily respond to every slight or aggression with more aggression. There's a way to keep moving forward. And I feel like that's really a lesson, because some of it is very easy to get overwhelmed by, it is not cynicism or even just skepticism. And at least for me, I think that's a really good thing to remember to choose optimism, because there's a real power in that.
And I think it was this optimism that blended with that confidence —going back to what we were saying about the T-shirts. The fact that he didn't have this classic design background, to put it in a way. And he found his way ‘in’ because he was so passionate, self-driven and eager to communicate, design and create.
And optimism doesn't necessarily mean naivete. I mean, I don't think that he was naive about the hurdles and the difficulty of what he was trying to do. I would also say that for all of his incredible hard work and his talent, he was also certainly a beneficiary of amazing timing and a lot of good luck as well. I do think that there is such a thing as luck, and he did benefit from some of that.
Speaking about the future of fashion, and especially the near future as the world and fashion are becoming more conservative. What do you think the legacy of Virgil Abloh in the fashion industry will be?
I wish I had a crystal ball! I do think that the way that we think about creative directors is forever changed, and it will be interesting to see what other brands can withstand and benefit from a creative director as "out of the norm" as Virgil was. I mean, clearly hiring Pharell and continuing with that kind of out of the box thinking, I think it will be interesting to see if we see something like that on the women's side. I think it's more challenging for a lot of different reasons.
I also will be really curious to look at the way that fashion addresses diversity and inclusivity moving forward.
So much of what I think was compelling about Virgil was the fact that he was kind of opening the door for fashion to a broader group of consumers. And that's not DEI in sort of the derogatory way that it's referred to, that's just called good business, and it's also being able to see the future, and being willing to lean into it, as opposed to running away from it. So I think that will be an interesting thing to observe and to see how Virgil's impact continues in that vein.
Make it Ours is now available
