MAKE IT OURS

Paying tribute to a pioneering designer.

Virgil Abloh’s life story did not presage his role as Louis Vuitton’s first Black artistic director. The child of Ghanian immigrants, Abloh grew up in small-town Illinois with no ties to the fashion industry. In college, he studied business, and in graduate school, architecture. His master’s program brought him to Chicago, where he became rapper Kanye West’s trusted friend. Instead of pursuing architecture, Abloh founded a brand called Off-White that grew out of his experimentation with printing graphics on luxury T-shirts. Although some critiqued the collection’s focus on image rather than silhouettes, Abloh’s work was enough to make him a finalist for the esteemed LVMH Prize. Journalist and author Givhan credits Abloh’s success to a combination of the rise of Black streetwear and the designer’s visionary talent. She writes, “Abloh rose during a time of existential angst for a fashion industry trying to make sense of its responsibilities to an increasingly diverse audience, its power to shape identity, and the challenges of selling status to a generation of consumers who fetishized sneakers, prioritized comfort, and had little use for rhapsodic nostalgia.” This evolution in the fashion industry, Givhan argues, created a space where Abloh excelled, in part, because he lacked the “familiar bona fides” required of most designers. Sometimes, the author spends more time on Abloh’s line of work than on his life—Abloh was only 41 when he died of cancer in 2021. But the book amply displays her deep knowledge of the fashion industry and her understanding of how history, culture, and systems of oppression shape style.

A finely tailored biography of a prestigious designer.