Style Points is a weekly column that explores the intersection of fashion and the wider world.
Tommy Ton, a street photographer, snapped a photo with Kanye West, Virgil Abloh and a group of their friends in Paris Fashion Week, pre-Instagram. Dressed to the nines, they all looked like PFW habitués, but as Abloh later recalled, they couldn’t even get into a Louis Vuitton show at the time.
Almost a decade after that, that same crew would reunite at Abloh’s 2018 debut as Louis Vuitton’s artistic director of menswear, an appointment that made him the first African-American to hold that position at a French luxury brand. The symbolism was almost too obvious: Abloh had gone from peacocking in front of a show venue to revealing his vision inside it. Abloh wanted to help future generations find their way. He was a lifeline for young Black creatives in particular, mentoring designers like Samuel Ross of A-COLD-WALL* and creating a scholarship program for Black fashion students last year.
Abloh wanted everyone feeling like they were in the front row, whereas many fashion gate-breakers focus on closing it to new entrants. He invited 3,000 students along to the Vuitton event. He said that he was proud to have invited such a large number of students to the Vuitton show. Women’s Wear Daily then, “I’m all about democracy. If some kid shows up, flew from New Jersey to just be around, let’s get him a seat.” His collection included some longtime friends as models, wending their way down his The Wiz-inspired runway. “You can do it too,” he posted on Instagram at the time, a message that might boil down to his personal philosophy.
This kind of generosity is rare in the industry, but the designer who tragically died yesterday at 41, did it through less than most. He was a Midwesterner born to Ghanian immigrant family. He didn’t grow up through the traditional routes, such as fashion school followed closely by an apprenticeship at a label. He did things his own way. His first label, Pyrex Vision was where he screen-printed Ralph Lauren Rugby pieces that were not in stock. This allowed him to engage in the kind of upcycling, re-appropriating, and re-appropriating that is now commonplace, but was still controversial at the time. After founding his Dadaist, quote-happy brand Off-White in 2013, he threw himself into unlikely collaborations with everyone from Ikea to Evian and referenced inspirations like Steve Jobs, Mies van der Rohe and Michael Jordan—blurring the boundaries between what was and wasn’t “fashion.” Maybe EverythingCould it be fashionable?
When I interviewed him for our September issue last year, he told me he always remained mindful of “the real world.” After all, “that’s what I based my fashion career on. The everyday person who can’t afford to spend $60 for a T-shirt. That’s also the fashion industry.” In that same interview, he also said had no plans to slow down. I didn’t know that he was battling a rare form cancer privately at the time. We talked about the changing tides of fashion amid the pandemic and how he was navigating them, and how much we both missed clocking people’s fashion statements out in the world. In that interview, he remained confident that disruption would come from those who had once been like him, an enthusiastic newbie trying to talk his way into a show: “The younger generation has the exact answer. It’s always the intern in the office who has the good ideas.”
Even though he’d achieved so much at barely 40, he didn’t seem to consider himself part of the Establishment, somewhat heartbreakingly so. “In my mind, I haven’t done any work yet,” he said then. “I’ve just sort of made a case for why my point of view is valid.” Those who looked up to him would argue he did far more than that.
Source: elle
