Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton’s fashion designer, is impossible to pigeon-hole
Fashion collaborator and founder of streetwear brand Off-White is always on-the-go – and aims to break down boundaries within industry
This article was written by Kevin Wong for HYPEBEAST.
I found it very difficult to approach writing this story about Virgil Abloh – someone so self-aware of his position in our culture, who delivers eloquent lectures, holds panel discussions that clearly outline his approach to design, and is able to describe his work in the context of pre-existing and current culture.
In plain words, fashion designer Abloh – founder of high-end streetwear brand Off-White and men’s artistic director of Louis Vuitton since March – is hyperconscious of all that he is doing and why it is effectively met with high praise.
With that said, let me share my experience of him.
Abloh was fully immersed, observing and inquiring. Shifting from designer and producer at the photo shoots to student and active participant.
The day I spent with him, in November, the tail end of his absolutely breakout 2017 year, was a jam-packed one.
It was the only day he was going to be in New York, and the day consisted of two separate location photo shoots, a private gallery visit, a bookstore visit, and a concert, which he DJ’ed.
Abloh had just arrived at the city’s John F. Kennedy International Airport that morning and was expected to leave the following afternoon – a quick peek at his Instagram stories and you can catch that this may be the most travelled man in the world at the moment – with his design studio in Paris, his “home” in Chicago, and his Off-White flagship stores in Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York and Singapore.
He travels so much, he has plans to create an installation that shows his flights just in 2017, via a red string on a map – “All you’d see is red”.