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of blue bandannas, and those Nike sneakers fixed with a
luggage tag that he’s made into a thing—there are soon
fashion editors swirling around him and models showing
up for fittings with stylist Stevie Dance. The predominant
sound, aside from Frank Ocean coming through the speakers,
is the big, warm laugh of Abloh, a man who appears to be
utterly relaxed and happy with just 24 hours to go before
Off-White’s fall 2019 ready-to-wear show. (Indeed, the next
night, just moments before the show began, I caught him
dancing backstage with a group of his friends.)
At one point, Bella Hadid shows up and disappears with
Dance into a fitting area before emerging in a pair of silky
black briefs, serious heels, and a black-and-white checked
jacket. Abloh takes it in, quietly nods in approval.
A few minutes later she reappears in a school
bus–yellow gown with a train that fills the room.
She walks for Abloh. “Sick,” he says, with a smile
from ear to ear. Abloh and Dance and Hadid are
now standing in front of a board with all the looks
from the show tacked to it trying to decide what
Hadid will wear.
“I love that first look,” she says.
“Yeah,” says Abloh. “Me too.”
“It’s major,” says Hadid. “And I love this, too.
They’re just so different.”
“But if you were going to an event, which one
would you wear?” Dance asks. “We can’t decide.”
“OK,” says Hadid. “On the count of three, say
one or two. One... two... three... .”
“One!” everyone shouts.
“Woo-hoo!” shouts Abloh, laughing. “Decision
made! That was easy.”
Later, I ask Abloh about letting Bella pick her
own look for the show. “Part of what makes a great
show,” he says, “is how Bella feels when she walks
on the runway. She has an uncanny, powerful
presence. And what
I think is important
is not her looks—it’s
her personality, her
brain, that makes
her unique and
compelling. So how
can I capture that?
Make her a part of
the process. That’s
how I had to find my magic trick. That’s what I want Off-
White to be about: The brand is just as much hers as it is
mine, or as much my intern’s or my assistant’s as it is mine.
It’s an empowered brand. My job is not to control and grasp
it, which is like trying to grab a feather. My job is to sort of
be a spirit leader.”
With the fashion world trying to modernize and make way
for new growth for some time now, the ascension of some-
one like Virgil Abloh—purveyor of hoodies and sneakers
that can run in the thousands—seems inevitable. What still
feels novel about his presence atop the industry, though, is
that he comes to it from academia. (Did any other designer
in history study structural engineering for five years and
earn a master’s degree in architecture?) Perhaps because
of all of those years in the ivory tower, Abloh reminds you
of nothing if not your favorite hip professor—art history,
perhaps, or comp lit—and is so laid-back about his accom-
plishments that he can also sometimes put you in mind of
another black man from Chicago with an African father:
Barack Obama.
When I suggest to Abloh that his hometown—despite its
intractable problems of government corruption and police
violence—seems unique in its ability to produce a kind of
black optimism, he agrees. “Chicago’s this place that births
a unique type of artist,” he says. “There’s some similarities
between a lot of them, like [artist] Theaster Gates and Kanye
West and [renowned Chicago house DJ] Frankie Knuckles,
myself. It has such a
strong black histo-
ry rooted there, but
it’s shielded. There’s
no cosmopolitan
tint to anything—
it’s really just a big
local community.
I think it’s a place
where you can find
your voice without
having to proclaim
that voice. And
there’s a strong so-
ciopolitical lineage
with the huge South
Side, which forced
black communities
to organize. You
either believe in the
doomsday scenario
or you want to effect
change, and what we
see in an Obama or
an Oprah—that
strikes a chord on the pos-
itive side with a number
of us who are from there.”
“I know he’s extremely
proud to be from Chi-
cago,” says the creative
director and DJ Heron
Preston, who worked with
Abloh on various Kanye projects in the mid-2000s, as well as
a streetwear line, Been Trill. “He was shaped by the Michael
Jordan era. At Coachella he had this big screen behind him
of Jordan in his prime.” What impressed Preston about
watching Abloh’s rise is “how clear his focus is. That’s how
he made it to Louis Vuitton—he wanted that position and
he just went for it, without letting any old rules get in the
way. He’s actually rewriting the rules, and many kids look
up to it. He’s really disrupted a conventional approach to a
design career.”
“Off-White is an empowered brand.
My job is not to control and grasp it,
which is like trying to grab a feather.
My job is to sort of be a spirit leader”
OBJECT LESSONS
From the MCAC’s “Virgil Abloh: ‘Figures of Speech,’ ” above: Nike
prototypes designed by Abloh in 2018. opposite, from left: A rug
prototype by Virgil Abloh for IKEA; a chair designed by Abloh in 2017.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 147
VIRGIL ABLOH, NIKE PROTOTYPES (UNRELEASED), 2018. PHOTO: BOGDAN PLAKOV.
