A High-Fashion Phoenix, Virgil Abloh Changed an Industry

New York Times

24-06-2025

MAKE IT OURS: Crashing the Gates of Culture With Virgil Abloh, by Robin Givhan
When Virgil Abloh became the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's men's wear division in 2018, it marked the pinnacle of an anomalous fashion industry ascent.
Prodigious, polymathic and perpetually online, Abloh was an unlikely candidate for the job, at least on paper. At the time of his appointment — Abloh was the first Black creative to assume the role at Louis Vuitton, and one of a short list to reach such industry heights — his only formal fashion training consisted of a single internship at Fendi. But he'd founded a popular clothing brand, earned the adoration of millions and managed to become a finalist for the LVMH Prize for young designers — all while eschewing the title of 'designer' in lieu of the more catholic 'maker.'
In 'Make It Ours,' The Washington Post's senior critic at large Robin Givhan examines the 'colliding circumstances' that propelled Abloh to fame before his death from a rare cancer at the age of 41. Toggling between biography and cultural history, Givhan posits that Abloh's success was at once a feat he was uniquely poised to achieve and indicative of the winds of change already sweeping through a high-end fashion industry seeking to appeal to a younger, more diverse consumer base.
Born in 1980 to Ghanaian immigrants in Rockford, Ill., Abloh studied civil engineering before moving to Chicago to obtain a master's degree in architecture. He divided his time between studying, skateboarding, D.J.-ing, blogging and screen-printing T-shirts, all the while linking and building with other self-taught creatives. Much is made throughout the book of this cohort's computer literacy and social-media savvy, a recurring detail that may feel revelatory to readers of a certain age but less resonant for digital natives for whom copious screen time has merely been a fact of life for the last two decades.
Abloh's omnipresence within Chicago's creative community led to a meeting, then collaboration, with the local celebrity Kanye West, who'd recently released two acclaimed albums and was just beginning to cement his reputation as an unrepentant firebrand. Givhan deftly traces the way the two men's paths converged and split over the course of their lengthy collaborative relationship.
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