Don’t Hate on Virgil Abloh…
Virgil Abloh was appointed to be the Creative Director for Louis Vuitton Menswear in the fall of 2018. Since then, he’s made some major changes to the men’s ready-to-wear line of the French fashion house.
But how did he rise to this level of success in the fashion industry? Since he started his own brand “Off-White”, he has had the opportunity to convince the rest of the fashion industry giants that luxury and designer clothes should take millennial streetwear into consideration.
Abloh founded Off-White in 2013, basing the designer headquarters in Milan, Italy. He defined “Off-White” as the “grey area between white and black”. This famous motto is printed in the tag of every one of their products.
Their designs mainly consist of construction-inspired barricade tapes, belts, zip ties, etc. The use of zip-ties and quotation marks is also a prominent characteristic of the brand.
For several years, the brand attracted attention from streetwear-thirsty consumers to high-end fashion brand designers. He’s been eyeing the main-stage for a while.
It was shocking news for everyone when Virgil Abloh was appointed to be the new Creative Director of Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Ready-to-Wear. In adopting this position, Abloh stated: “It is an honor for me to accept this position. I find the heritage and creative integrity of the house are key inspirations and will look to reference them both while drawing parallels to modern times”.
For Abloh, Off-White streetwear was all about the modern times. There was no doubt that some of the qualities and designs that we previously saw in Off-White collections would soon appear in Louis Vuitton.
Let’s take a look at the Spring Summer 2019 collection, Abloh’s debut collection at Louis Vuitton.
This is the first time Louis Vuitton incorporated plastic chains in designing Men’s leather goods.
Unsurprisingly, this architecture-inspired design can also be seen in Off-White.
Furthermore, we can see that the “utility” style that permeated Off-White designs has made its way over to Louis Vuitton.
Now compare that to Louis Vuitton’s Climbing utility short sleeve shirt:
Apart from revolutionizing luxury design, Virgil Abloh also tweaked other aspects of the brand.
In Kim Jones’ last collection, the Fall Winter 2018, there were 8 black models out of 52 models that walked the runway.
In Virgil Abloh’s debut collection, the Spring Summer 2019, there were around 30 black models out of 56 models that walked the runway.
Abloh is utilizing a more pan-ethnic group of models in his collections, expanding the diversity within the fashion world on a scale we have not seen before.
In his debut collection, he also got some of his friends to star on the runway, featuring Kid Cudi, A$AP Nast, Playboy Carti, and more.
He was also seen embracing his close friend, Kanye West, at the end of the SS19 collection run.
They’ve both come a long way since delivering coffee and earning less than $500 a month at a Fendi internship. Now they both have successful brands under their name, and are extremely notable within the industry.
Both working as majorly successful African-American designers, they have inspired diversity within the industry for other people to adopt and follow.
Don’t hate on him. He’s taking fashion seriously.
No designer has addressed the issue of ethnic inequality or the lack of diversity on the runway like Abloh has, and we should all be grateful for his efforts in trying to revolutionize the fashion industry.
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