Virgil Abloh, the multihyphenate creative who passed away on Sunday, inspired a clear and rapacious passion from his fans, which in addition to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in between, included legions of young people around the globe — devotees of his many aesthetic whims.
But for Abloh’s detractors, the relationship was possibly even more emotional. He was an enthusiastic connoisseur of Nineties and 2000s subcultures — skateboarding, DJ’ing, graffiti — offering a reflection of underground concerns in the mainstream. His rise was a wake-up call for those who were raised with particular sensibilities. Abloh was likely to feel a reflexive suspicion towards elite luxury fashion purveyors. These people are historically and probably irreparably connected with the forces that push people into underground. The designer was sharing the secrets and culture of a people that shuns pop culture. He was radically generous with the things that mattered to him.
In his brand Off-White, as well as in his role as the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear division, he introduced garments inspired by the looks of graffiti artists, rappers, and punks. Lucien Clarke was gifted a pro model shoe by Abloh. Abloh didn’t see a need to hide the things he loved because he loved everything and everyone. He was known for reaching out to many young artists and giving them encouragement. Your Instagram feed will be filled with Abloh tributes, stories of encounters and encouragement, no matter where you are located.
In the wake of his death, there has been an admirable and significant reflection on Abloh’s impact as a Black designer within the historically white world of high-fashion, and on his role as a gate-crasher, opening the doors for new voices and new imagery.
There is still an urge to protect cultural totems from being co-opted by oppressive forces. We regret Hollywood’s casting decisions, and we seek to give TikTok the right credit as a matter political urgency, in order to redress systemic cruelty that has been longstanding.Abloh saw a different route entirely. The rejection of the entire cultural framework. This is an op–ed from 2019. The New York Times,He wrote that “in the digital world, the myth of power persists as a construct. To believe that you have power is to have it.”
Abloh says the current generation is his favorite. “have been graced with equity at birth,”This would make all of our worldly concerns about politics irrelevant. It was easy back then to imagine a forceful dismissal of the idea as naive. Abloh clearly understood the struggle of the oppressed: It is more difficult to create power from scarcity than from abundance.
Oder is it?
Abloh says that this new generation of digital natives is characterized by a high level of intelligence. “self-earned influence.”One that has made room for “a new species of power that has less to do with silver spoons or nepotism, and everything to do with the numbers that quantify influence.”
Abloh’s view of digital culture is strikingly utopian, but rooted in what feels like a necessary optimism. His project wasn’t simply making space for more designers who looked like him, but of rendering useless a framework that sees the need to preface a designer’s work with their identity.
The same applies to the cultures that inspired him. A Louis Vuitton skate shoe, on its face, is a confounding mash-up of disparate ideas — a luxury sneaker made to be destroyed by an activity that (despite endless efforts) can never be metabolized by the world of luxury fashion. And yet, there are now scores of young skateboarders around the world with keys to rooms they’d never been allowed into otherwise.
What Virgil Abloh accomplished, what made him truly brilliant, wasn’t that he simply made elite spaces more diverse. His mission was to spread their power. Simply put, he understood what happens when you invite a bunch DJs, graffiti artists, and skaters to a highbrow function.
Last month, around Halloween, he DJ’d an afterparty for a Lower Manhattan gallery opening. It’s still a mystery how I ended up there. I’d gone to the opening at the invitation of a friend, and in a series of events reserved for premium-cable series, found myself strolling through Manhattan with one of Abloh’s longtime collaborators.
The two young women who were assigned to guard the entrance refused to let me in. I felt like the universe was lowering me. Surely someone had seen my various tweets or text messages hating on Abloh’s output. I braced myself for the blistering recognition of hypocrisy when our generation’s magic words wafted through the air: “I’ll text Virgil.”
Inside, filled with a needed dose of humble pie, I watched the crowd undulate to Abloh’s eccentric method of spinning. Drake’s “Way 2 Sexy” made way for Wizkid before, at some point, Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA.” It was probably the only time in my life I’ll ever hear MF Doom on a dance floor.
There was none like Virgil Abloh. It is hard to believe that we have lost him so soon. Before his worst enemies could even realize that they were his biggest fans, he was gone.