Latest news with #Givhan
Elle
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Elle
From Seventh Avenue to Parisian Ateliers—Here are 10 Books to Learn About Fashion History
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. There's no way to dive into fashion without immediately coming face to face with two of the modern greats: Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. Dana Thomas's Gods and Kings follows the course of the pair's similarly timed (and in the eyes of the media, often rival) careers while giving context to both their personal lives and the rapid rise and growth of LVMH. It was a time of big ideas, scrappy personalities, and cutthroat business—and it changed fashion forever. The Battle of Versailles is probably one of the lesser-known events to occur within the infamous palace halls, but it's definitely one of the most important for the fashion industry. Written by Pulitzer Prize–winning fashion critic Robin Givhan, the book examines the unprecedented runway walk-off between European and American designers that solidified Seventh Avenue in fashion history. Also by Givhan, 'Make It Ours' is an in-depth look at both the late Virgil Abloh and the traditional luxury industry over which he triumphed. The book deftly chronicles the rise of his career alongside the rapidly changing fashion landscape, leading to his historic and ultimately brief appointment at Louis Vuitton. With an approach that's part biography and part cultural analysis, Givhan offers a thorough portrait of luxury's streetwear era. A little bit more on the theory side, Sex and Suits charts the history of men's and women's dress all the way from medieval times to the modern day. The book questions why menswear underwent such a drastic transformation following the 18th century and looks at how gender affects fashion to this day. Hollander is unafraid to get into the nitty-gritty—all of her books are a must-read. 'It's been Bleak Street over here in America!' Those are the famous words of the late André Leon Talley, who once declared a 'famine of beauty' in New York fashion. Talley's memoir paints a moving portrait of his singular career. From North Carolina to New York to Paris and beyond, The Chiffon Trenches is an intimate and, at times, ruthless account of his experience across the fashion industry. Believe it or not, the American fashion industry is largely responsible for much of the way designers think about ready-to-wear today. Prior to the modern-day Fashion Week, the youthquake movement, and the Battle of Versailles, European ateliers often snubbed the factories on Seventh Avenue. But Nancy MacDonell's Empresses of Seventh Avenue examines the historic shift in clothing following World War II and the select group of movers and shakers in New York City who made it happen. As the foundational text for the 2025 Met Gala theme, Monica L. Miller's Slaves to Fashion is a crucial examination of the history of the Black dandy. Beginning in the 1700s, Miller observes how the archetype has contextually transformed across generations, from its origins within the slave trade to representations of the Black dandy in art and music today. Claire McCardell helped radically transform the way women dress. To the designer, clothing served as an opportunity for female empowerment, which led to more casual, freeing silhouettes that helped form the basis for American sportswear. Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson's biography sheds light on McCardell's underappreciated career. Behind every garment is the person who made it, and behind every maker is a story about the inner workings of our clothes. Sofi Thanhauser's Worn is a deep dive into global textiles, both historic and new, and how their production processes have changed over time. The book also examines the industry's waste, pollution, and labor exploitation, painting a comprehensive backstory of our garments. From ELLE's own Véronique Hyland, Dress Code dives into how style—and the way we talk about it—shapes our daily lives. The book explores how fashion permeates all aspects of life, from the enduring allure of the 'French girl' archetype to the politics of how we dress in the workplace. Hyland examines how fashion is inextricably linked to our routines and why it remains undervalued within the realms of art and culture.
Gulf Today
05-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Robin Givhan chronicles Virgil Abloh's rise to fashion fame
With his calm and cool demeanour, fashion disruptor and multi-hyphenate Virgil Abloh artfully challenged the fashion industry's traditions to leave his mark as a Black creative, despite his short-lived career. In the years since his 2021 death at just 41, his vision and image still linger. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robin Givhan sheds new light on how Abloh ascended the ranks of one of the top luxury fashion houses and captivated the masses with her latest book, 'Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh.' In the book out recently, Givhan documents Abloh's early life growing up as the son of Ghanaian immigrants in Rockford, Illinois, his days as graduate student studying architecture and his working relationship and friendship with Kanye West. Before taking the helm of Louis Vuitton as the house's first Black menswear creative director, Abloh threw himself into his creative pursuits including fine art, architecture, DJing and design. Abloh remixed his interests with his marketing genius and channeled it into fashion with streetwear labels like Been Trill and Pyrex Vision. These endeavours were the launchpad for his luxury streetwear label Off-White, known for its white diagonal lines, quotation marks, red zip ties and clean typeface. Off-White led to Abloh's collaboration with Ikea, where he designed a rug with 'KEEP OFF' in all-white letters and also with Nike where he deconstructed and reenvisioned 10 of Nike's famous shoe silhouettes. Throughout his ventures, Abloh built a following of sneakerheads and so-called hypebeasts who liked his posts, bought into his brands and showed up in droves outside his fashion shows. Social media made Abloh accessible to his fans and he tapped into that. Off-White had built a loyal following and some critics. Givhan, a Washington Post senior critic-at-large, openly admits that she was among the latter early on. Givhan said she was fascinated that Abloh's popularity was more than his fashion. For her latest project, Givhan spoke with The Associated Press on how she approached each of Abloh's creative undertakings and his legacy during a period of heightened racial tension in America. Can you talk about the process of writing about all of his creative endeavors and how they shaped his career? The skater culture — in part because it was such a sort of subculture that also had a very specific aesthetic and was such a deep part of the whole world of streetwear — and then the DJing part intrigued me because so much of his work as a designer seems to reflect a kind of DJ ethos, where you're not creating the melody and you're not creating the lyrics. You're taking these things that already exist and you're remixing them and you're responding to the crowd and the crowd is informing you. And so much of that, to me, could also be used to describe the way that he thought about fashion and the way that he designed. What role would you say that Virgil has had in the fashion industry today? He certainly raised the question within the industry of what is the role of the creative director? How much more expansive is that role? ... And I do think he has really forced the question of how are we defining luxury? Like what is a luxury brand? And is it something that is meant to sort of have this lasting impact? Is it supposed to be this beautifully crafted item? Or is it really just a way of thinking about value and beauty and desirability? And if it's those things, then really it becomes something that is quite sort of quite personal and can be quite based on the community in which you live. How did he use social media to his advantage and to help catapult his career? He really used social media as a way of connecting with people as opposed to just sort of using it as kind of a one-way broadcast. He was telling his side of things, but he was also listening to other people. He was listening to that feedback. That's also what made him this larger-than-life person for a lot of people, because not only was he this creative person who was in conversation with fans and contemporaries, but he was this creative person inside. Associated Press
Los Angeles Times
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Jennifer Givhan's otherworldly ‘Salt Bones' is infused with Mexican American and Indigenous culture
An early line from 'Salt Bones,' the latest novel from talented poet and novelist Jennifer Givhan, reads, 'Daughters disappear here.' It is a line that haunts the Salton Sea region, where Givhan has set her latest novel and infuses the toxic air upon which her characters must survive. In other words, this warning to keep your daughters close clings to everything. It is in the air, but also — in this thriller that employs elements of magical realism and mystery — it is in the water, buffeting each of these characters with the cadence of windblown waves crashing against the shore. The Salton Sea is just as much a character here as Givhan's main protagonists: Mal, a mother of two daughters, and the two daughters themselves — Amaranta, in high school, and Griselda, a science major in college. Through them, we get a sense of this place, what it was, what it is and what it is becoming. A sea that evaporates and pulls back year after year, exposing a lake bed contaminated with agricultural runoff and revealing not just the bones of fish but also a painful history that many would rather remains beneath the water's surface. El Valle, the fictional town that serves as the primary setting for 'Salt Bones,' is haunted by what surrounds it. By the memories of the missing. Daughters like Mal's own sister, Elena, who disappeared more than 20 years before. Now with two daughters of her own, Mal is a butcher at the local carnicería. But when one of the workers at the shop, Renata, a young woman the same age as Mal's eldest daughter, doesn't show up for work one day, Mal begins to spiral into the past, questioning what she could have done differently, and then what she could do now. And, most of all, why does all of this seem to keep happening here in El Valle? For Mal and her family, there is no escape. They are followed not just by memories, but also by Mal's mother's spite-fueled dementia, which returns all of them again and again to the fissures in time just before and just after the disappearance of Mal's sister. And now, with Renata gone missing, there is nowhere to hide from the tragedy of this place, not at work, not at home and not even at the edges of the Salton Sea where Mal can sometimes find a tenuous peace. But it is not just Mal who roams these shores, but La Siguanaba, a shape-shifter often associated with Central American and Mexican folklore, wearing 'whatever a man lusts after most. Sequins. Spandex. Fishnet. Nothing at all.' And then after enticing these men to approach, this being — often described as a woman — turns and reveals the 'white-boned skull of a horse' beneath her long dark hair. 'By the time they scream,' Givhan writes, 'it's too late.' La Siguanaba is a cautionary tale and a myth to some in El Valle. She is a ghost story to keep the kids safe and away from danger, but to Mal, she is very real. La Siguanaba comes to her in dreams; in her waking hours, she lurks just beyond the light. Her smell — something like urine and unmucked stables — floats on the wind, acting like a warning, a memory, a message. But all this — the monster in the shadows, the missing daughters and even a rising tension in El Valle over a lithium plant and a looming ecological disaster — is only part of the story. Mal can only know so much, and it is through the details revealed by Mal's daughters, Amaranta and Griselda, that we begin to comprehend the depth of this story. Like all good mysteries, there is a whole world just out of reach: secret lives, secrets kept, secrets used like currency. For us — the readers — the clues are there. Givhan does a wonderful job infusing the early pages with hints and observations from each of the three perspectives, Mal, Amaranta and Griselda, all of whom are hiding things from each other. To the reader, who benefits from the combined knowledge of these characters, each perspective adds a different lens. Mal, with her mother's intuition and almost otherworldly connection to La Siguanaba, Amaranta, who is the youngest and still very much a child and who sees what others don't expect her to, and then Griselda, home from college, who looks on all of this with a fresh, almost outside perspective. All of them come to the same conclusion very early on: Something is very off in this small community. 'Salt Bones' is a worthy read. It's a book infused with the language and culture of a strong Mexican American and Indigenous community. In some way, like La Siguanaba, it's a conduit into another world. A complicated, real and very much welcome, if a bit scary, world. And though the layering of information — of what we know, what remains hidden from us and what has been foreshadowed — does add up (delaying what becomes a propulsive search for the missing in the second half of the novel), Givhan's talents as a writer of blunt, strong sentences and remarkable poetic passages regarding the landscape and the sea more than make up for any delay. 'Salt Bones' is a triumph. One of the most masterful marriages of horror, mystery, thriller and literary writing that I've read in some time. And it is certainly a book that will haunt you (in a good way!) for a very long time after you've turned the final page. Waite is the author of four novels and a book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Virgil Abloh's Career and Cultural Impact Detailed in Robin Givhan's New Book
Although fashion can typecast designers, Virgil Abloh's agility in complexity and his ability to not just build community, but also guide it, transcended that. With her new book 'Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture With Virgil Abloh,' Robin Givhan details and contextualizes how the Chicago-born multidisciplinary talent became a cultural leader by heading menswear for Louis Vuitton. Taking on that job in 2018, Abloh upended the industry and became the first Black artistic director in the luxury house's 164-year history. His death at the age of 41 in 2021 was a global news story that was fueled in part by the millions who mourned him. More from WWD Tyla Cycles Through Nike Sneakers, Gold Brian Atwood Heels and Rene Caovilla Wrap Sandals While Hosting the 2025 Kids' Choice Awards Nike Is Releasing New See-Through Air Force 1 Sneakers With Bling Nike's Settlement With Shoe Surgeon Defines Boundaries on Sneaker Customization A trained architect, Abloh combined streetwear with exclusivity long before he walked the halls of LVMH. A proven DJ, he blended music, race, taste, luxury, DIY, marketing, architecture, and sneakerhead fetishes into his creations. Givhan, The Washington Post's senior critic-at-large, took leave in 2023 to write the book. She said she hadn't wanted to write a traditional biography that begins with, ''He was born on a nice fall day in September.'' Her preference was to focus on the years that were most important from a fashion perspective. That included his high school years, since Abloh often spoke of doing everything for the 17-year-old version of himself. Despite not having any formal training in patternmaking or tailoring, Abloh's story is about optimism. His accolades are many. Before joining Louis Vuitton, his endeavors included starting Off-White, collaborating with Nike and Ikea, and working with Kanye West at Donda. Describing her relationship with Abloh as 'purely arms-distance professional,' Givhan said his passing caused such 'an outpouring from so many people that felt so much more intimate.' While the fact that he was only 41 was a factor, it was also as if 'a good friend or someone people felt they had a special relationship to had passed away,' Givhan said. 'That was pretty interesting to me.' The fact that Givhan had spent a good deal of her time being 'pretty critical' of Abloh's collections created a disconnect that intrigued her. 'So much of what he was doing really wasn't about the clothes at all. As I was focused on say, a varsity jacket, or his collection that was inspired by Princess Diana, the thing I was missing was that the clothes weren't about making people feel like they were in vogue, in style or on trend,' Givhan said. 'It was about making them feel like they were part of a community in the same way that sports fans put on the jersey of their favorite team. That communicates something to like-minded people.' She recalled how while speaking with students, Abloh tossed a Nike prototype that he was working on into the audience for feedback, and chuckled about how doing so probably violated all kinds of rules with his collaborator. 'He felt very comfortable just pulling down the curtains and saying, 'Look. This is what's going on behind-the-scenes,'' Givhan said. 'Sometimes it was very transparent and sometimes it was the illusion of transparency.' The author hopes that readers will recognize that Abloh was standing on the shoulders of other people who had challenges that he didn't have to face, such as Ozwald Boateng and Edward Buchanan. Another takeaway is how cultural shifts made space for Abloh. The power of social media, the rise of menswear, fashion's efforts to reach a broader audience, and 'the degree to which the customer base was, and is continuing to become so much more diverse, helped Abloh become this figure that so many people were wowed by,' Givhan said. Asked about Abloh's greatest accomplishments, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Givhan highlighted the example that he gave to people 'who feel that they are so far outside of an industry that they don't even know where the front door is. They have no idea about foundations, prizes, scholarships and all of the things that the industry does to bring in more people. I hope they look at his story and see that they shouldn't feel that way,' she said. 'Also, I hope the industry looks more closely at what it gains by elevating someone with an unorthodox background like Virgil.' Givhan added, 'I hope people get a sense of optimism, because Virgil was an optimist. That was something he imparted to his fans. He made them believe in possibility even as he frustrated them and the industry [laughed.]' Best of WWD Photos of Noah Lyles' Fashion Barry Keoghan's Style: A Closer Look Fear of God Opens First Store at Selfridges
New York Times
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A High-Fashion Phoenix, Virgil Abloh Changed an Industry
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. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
