Virgil Abloh: From Architecture to Icon – The Education and Influences That Shaped a Fashion Revolutionary
Virgil Abloh, the late artistic director at Louis Vuitton, CEO and founder of the luxury brand Off-White, and self-made fashion designer, carved a unique path in the fashion world. His journey, marked by an unconventional educational background and a relentless pursuit of creative expression, solidified his place as one of the most iconic and influential designers of our time. Abloh's story serves as an inspiration, proving that passion, vision, and a willingness to break the rules can lead to extraordinary success, regardless of formal training.
A Non-Traditional Trajectory
Abloh's rise to prominence challenges traditional notions of what it takes to succeed in the fashion industry. Unlike many of his peers, he didn't have formal fashion education before his big break. Instead, he brought a fresh perspective shaped by his studies in engineering and architecture.
The fashion community has expanded upon the types of backgrounds one can have to become a fashion designer. Tom Ford, for example, also studied Architecture before switching to Fashion. In a similar vein, Raf Simmons, who has famously worked with Calvin Klein, Dior, and most recently Prada, began as a furniture designer. While these examples are of people with backgrounds in design, many famous names in fashion came from even less traditional beginnings: Vivienne Westwood started off as an art teacher, Giorgio Armani attended medical school, and Vera Wang was a figure skater trying out for the Olympic team. In another life, these icons may have never tried their hand at fashion and could have pursued their plan A, but they all share a desire to design clothing and the guts to break the rules.
Early Life and Education: Laying the Foundation
Virgil Abloh may not have initially intended to go into the fashion industry, yet his creativity and passion for design were always present in his life. Born to Ghanaian immigrants in Rockford, Illinois, he was always interested in artistic pursuits, immersing himself in skater and hip-hop culture. His mother, a seamstress, taught him how to sew, providing him with foundational skills that would later prove invaluable. Abloh graduated from Boylan Catholic High School in 1998.
In 2002, Abloh graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. He continued his education, receiving his Master of Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2006.
Read also: What makes a quality PE curriculum?
The Influence of Architecture
While studying at IIT, he took note of a building under construction designed by famed architect Rem Koolhaas, known for his unique and almost gravity-defying works. He then became inspired by this structure to work on his own designs in fashion, starting his brand The Brilliance, which he eventually tabled to create Off-White.
Abloh’s unique creative vision and perspective from his architectural background gave him an edge over others starting in the fashion industry. Although he did not use his degree in Architecture as he had originally planned, he credits the discipline’s values of understanding one’s scope and intricate planning to influencing his creative process. Interestingly, his architectural background informed more of his thought process than his actual designs. In an interview with Dezeen, he stated “I don't believe in disciplines… We can use our architecture brain and do many things, not just what we're supposed to do.”
During his time at IIT, Abloh regularly cited how influential studying in S. R. Crown Hall was to him. In an interview with Kaleidoscope, he noted, “The moment that I stepped inside Crown I lost my breath. It unlocked my brain about the transcending quality of art.”
Additionally, IIT introduced Abloh to the work of Rem Koolhaas, who had finished The McCormick Tribune Campus Center shortly before he arrived at the university. Abloh credited Koolhaas with teaching him how to “combine socio-political thinking with design,” and the two went on to collaborate regularly throughout Abloh’s career.
Early Career and the Kanye West Connection
It was actually through designing t-shirts in Chicago that he met rapper Kanye West, who felt connected to Abloh’s vision and was inspired by his work, especially since they have a shared upbringing as young artists in Chicago.
Read also: Maximize Savings on McGraw Hill Education
Sometime between earning his degrees, he was introduced to Kanye West (later “Ye”), who was gaining attention for his work as a music producer, and Abloh was hired to be a part of West’s creative team in 2007. In subsequent years Abloh and West collaborated on a variety of endeavors, including a six-month internship (2009) at the Rome headquarters of Italian fashion house Fendi. Kanye eventually took him in and named him creative director of West’s own creative label and even helped him get an internship with Fendi. Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke recently told The New York Times, “I was really impressed with how [Abloh and West] brought a whole new vibe to the studio and were disruptive in the best way. Virgil could create a metaphor and a new vocabulary to describe something as old-school as Fendi. I have been following his career ever since.”
In 2010 Abloh became the creative director of Donda, West’s creative incubator, helping the musician actualize his aspirations beyond music. Abloh also served as art director on West’s albums My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) and Yeezus (2013) and on West and Jay-Z’s collaboration, Watch the Throne (2011), which garnered Abloh a Grammy nomination.
During this period Abloh also pursued his own undertakings, including opening RSVP Gallery (2009), a boutique and gallery in Chicago, with Don C, a friend and business partner of West’s.
Pyrex Vision and the Birth of Off-White
Abloh created his first fashion label, Pyrex Vision, in 2012. An example from the collection included flannel shirts from Ralph Lauren that were screen-printed with the word Pyrex, the brand name of bakeware used to cook cocaine, and the number 23, Michael Jordan’s jersey number when he was in the NBA. The references alluded to the only two economic paths Abloh believed a Black man could take: selling drugs or playing professional sports.
In 2013 he shuttered Pyrex Vision and started Off-White. Abloh characterized Off-White as “the gray area between black and white,” a description that was befitting for a label that seemingly hovered between streetwear and luxury fashion. The debut menswear collection featured screen-printed hoodies, denim shirts, anoraks, basketball shorts, and similar garments favored by youth culture. He used Instagram early on as a means of promoting his work to audiences directly.
Read also: Becoming a Neonatal Nurse
In 2014 Abloh launched a women’s line and began showing both collections during Paris Fashion Week. The following year Abloh was announced as a finalist for the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers, and Off-White gained attention when Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj wore pieces from the label in the latter’s video for the song “Feeling Myself.”
Off-White continued to gain recognition, becoming known for its tongue-in-cheek humor and use of quotation marks. Knee-high boots for the women’s fall 2017 line, for example, were embellished along the calf with the words “for walking,” a phrase playfully recalling Nancy Sinatra’s 1966 hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”
Abloh opened Off-White’s first flagship store in Hong Kong in 2015 and introduced the label’s first furniture collection, Grey Area, the following year. He also frequently collaborated with brands such as Levi’s, IKEA, RIMOWA luggage, Timberland, and Jimmy Choo. His best-known partnership, however, was with Nike, on “the ten,” a collection of refreshed designs of a few of the brand’s most iconic styles. One of the first shoes to drop was the Off-White x Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG in 2017.
Louis Vuitton and a Groundbreaking Appointment
In 2018 Abloh was named artistic director of Louis Vuitton (LV) menswear, becoming the first person of color to hold the position. He debuted his first collection that summer during Paris Fashion Week. It featured Wizard of Oz themes and reimagined Louis Vuitton signature bags in translucent plastic or matte leather with ceramic chains. The line also included accessories, for which the French brand is especially known, transformed into garments, so that pouches and purses were attached to vests and oversized shirts. The show brought a standing ovation from the audience and an emotional embrace between West, who was in attendance, and Abloh.
The harness as an accessory became a surprisingly popular piece from Abloh’s first LV collection. Actors Chadwick Boseman, Timothée Chalamet, and Michael B. Jordan were all seen sporting the accoutrement on the red carpet throughout 2018 and 2019.
A Visionary Approach to Fashion
Abloh’s nontraditional background came through his unconventional approach to fashion design. Particularly within his luxury streetwear brand Off-White, Abloh broke the barriers of what is typically thought of as “fashion” and posed questions about what fashion can be, mainly dealing with the industry’s role as a social tool. However, he avoided taking his creative expression too seriously, stating in The Cut, “Fashion is kinda a joke… I don't get too bogged down in the clothes. For me, it's one big art project, just a canvas to show that fashion should have a brand that has someone behind it who cares about different contexts.” All in all, Virgil Abloh perceived fashion to represent much more about the person inside the clothes than what the pieces themselves are supposed to mean. “Life is the hard part,” he said in an interview with GQ, “Fashion isn’t.”
What may be even more fascinating about his work was his approach to fashion as a means of social critique and self-expression, which showcased his talent for incorporating intellectual diversity in his work. Off-White’s signature style was the quotation marks around certain buzz words or even the words that describe what the product is-i.e. creating a scarf that has “scarf” written on it, or knee-high boots that say “for walking” up the leg. This meta-commentary on what fashion is supposed to mean encapsulates his perspective that the clothes aren’t what matters; instead, their significance lies in what they represent to the person wearing them.
Abloh often took existing ideas from a range of sources, including music, history, and architecture, and made them his own. Abloh compared himself to hip-hop artists who sampled from other musicians’ songs for their own work, or to French artist Marcel Duchamp, who created the ready-made, an everyday object that he selected and designated as art.
Championing Diversity and Inclusion
In addition to his trailblazing efforts for those with unorthodox fashion backgrounds, Abloh also became a leader in diversifying the fashion community and expanding upon high fashion’s inclusivity. While many luxury brands have had their fair share of mistakes, Abloh has always prioritized diversity within his work. He had an understanding of his duty to pave the way for others of marginalized identities as one of the first Black designers in charge of a major French fashion house. He always made it a point to include models of varying racial identities and mostly cast people who inspired him, even having the Black poet Saul Williams open the Louis Vuitton autumn/winter 2021 menswear collection. In terms of gender diversity, he designed a variety of menswear and womenswear. He created clothing that defied traditional gender norms, including his spring/summer 2021 Off-White collection that included African-inspired skirts for men. Abloh also felt a need to diversify the audiences of his runway collections, inviting Parisian youths to sit front row at many of his shows. He even created a fund entitled the “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund and raised $1 million dollars for Black fashion students.
tags: #virgil #abloh #education #background
