By N. Morah
Virgil Abloh, a prominent African American fashion designer and entrepreneur died Sunday, November 28th, at forty-one years old. He passed away after a hard two-year battle with cardiac angiosarcoma, a very rare cancer, but in his time alive he did many things for fashion and the black community as a whole.
Abloh never got a formal education in fashion, but he had the drive and passion to do great things. He started his career working with Kanye West on a deal with Nike. He interned at Fendi in the same class as Kanye, so they were already close. He sported some streetwear looks alongside Kanye during New York Fashion week and quickly gained attention. Streetwear wasn’t typically seen as fashion, so it was something quite different from what people were used to. In 2018, Abloh was given the opportunity to be the Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear. He graciously took this job and this set him on a creative burst, introducing urban streetwear and hype beast culture to high fashion.
Abloh believed that clothes were a ‘fungible totem of identity’ and he carried that with him to the industry. His biggest and most known accomplishment is his founding of the high-end streetwear brand Off-White. The clothing line can be identified through its use of quotation marks, zip-ties, capital letters, and barricade tape. The idea was to bring blackness to the runway, to take this vision that most people saw as run down and low income and make it big and important.
He supported and inspired many black creators to jump outside of the box and create – one of the many being Tyler, The Creator, who stated, “Sir Abloh was a true geek about things. Passion seeped through everything he did. Whether a random set of songs we’ve never heard or what pantone the wing of a plane should be, he always meant it…ABLOH. That strong African last name. A few years back I started using more of my African last name Okonma because of how regal Virgil’s felt. Everything he did felt like he said “Hey over here, the coast is clear” Whenever I questioned things, now about a week away since we last spoke, that convo I thought was random holds so much more weight now. Sometimes, part of us sharing our wild ideas is to get approval from our peers to keep it pushing, but Virgil was always a cheerleader. For everyone. That hand of his opened doors, lead people in, and tossed the keys outside for the next person to have. I wish I was able to see him see what his helping hand did for me.”
Instead of a designer, Virgil Abloh called himself a maker to represent not only the art he created, but the other artists he inspired. “There are people around this room who look like me. You never saw that before in fashion. The people have changed so the fashion had to.” He made it so and took pride in that until his very last day.
Categories: Culture, Fashion, Style, World News
The Nautilus Navigator 