New Book Traces Remarkable Rise Of Virgil Abloh In The Fashion World

Although the architect of “Off-White,” Virgil Abloh, died in 2021 at only 41 after succumbing to a rare form of cancer, the designer, who studied architecture before breaking big in the fashion world, has remained a figure of interest, and now, a new book from a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic re-examines his rise.

According to Gothamist, Abloh’s story is being revisited through The Washington Post‘s senior critic-at-large Robin Givhan’s biography of Abloh, titled “Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh.”

The book explores the things that shaped the designer and helped make him a singular figure in the world of fashion, a world that historically excluded Black people from exercising power and real creative control. Abloh, as the book’s title alludes to, made it his instrument.

In Givhan’s book, a tremendous amount of time is spent engaging with Abloh’s 17-year-old self, an age that he honored throughout much of his work.

As the author told WNYC‘s Alison Stewart, “Virgil talked a lot about doing things to impress the 17-year-old version of himself. He spent a lot of time celebrating 17-year-olds, teenagers, young people, and expressing how he valued their point of view. He valued their sense of style, so I knew that any biography that tried to explore his fashion origins really needed to start with the 17-year-old Virgil.”

Abloh grew up in Rockford, Illinois, a working-class town situated between Chicago and the Iowa border. As Givhan indicated in the interview, it was a city that had dealt with segregation in the past and was still very much a segregated city in the 1990s, when Abloh was coming of age. In that respect, Rockford is not much different from other cities in the Midwest, nor is it much different from Chicago itself.

Abloh studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology for Architecture, almost out of a sense of obligation for the sacrifices his parents made to come to America from Ghana. However, according to Givhan’s account, he saw architecture as a bridge between something concrete and something creative.

Abloh earnestly got his start in fashion by taking deadstock Ralph Lauren rugby shirts and silk-screening them with the words “Pyrex 23,” with this simple modification on a $30 or $40 product, he turned around and sold them for well in excess of $500, marking an inflection point on his journey, this is where he realized that his own ingenuity and creativity could open doors that others were turned away from.

For Abloh, the infamous Malice at the Palace fracas provided an alleyway into the world of the NBA, where Black players who were banned from wearing anything remotely resembling Black cultural dress on team business were also unwittingly given an impromptu fashion runway by the league itself—the tunnel area of NBA arenas—which the players subsequently used to build their own brands independent of their on-court play.

Abloh later parlayed a collaboration with Nike–the now iconic “Off-White” collection–into an appointment as the artistic director at Louis Vuitton, a position now occupied by superproducer Pharrell Williams.

In part, it happened for Abloh because Louis Vuitton saw how dynamic Abloh’s work with Nike had become–it was a cultural touchstone–and as a pop culture-centric brand, Louis Vuitton believed that Abloh could do the same thing for their brand, in part because of how recognized he was by pop culture.

Givhan’s book, which was released on June 24, has been well received so far.

According to a Publishers Weekly review, the book functions as a lasting testament to Abloh’s influence on the fashion industry writ large.

“The sharp blend of biography, cultural history, and fashion criticism makes effective use of Abloh’s story to speak to a recent tectonic shift inside the fashion industry as it reconsiders the meaning of luxury and who gets to decide. The result is an excellent testament to Abloh’s enduring influence,” the review stated.

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