Early life and education<\/strong><\/p>\nVirgil Abloh was born on September 30, 1980, in Rockford, Illinois, to Ghanaian immigrant parents.<\/p>\n
His mother was a seamstress and his father managed a paint company. Abloh was raised in Rockford, where he attended Boylan Catholic High School, graduating in 1998.<\/p>\n
He graduated from the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison in 2002 with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. He received his Master of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2006.<\/p>\n
When Abloh was attending IIT there was a building on campus under construction designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas which helped spark his interests in fashion.<\/p>\n
While studying architecture, he designed t-shirts and wrote on fashion and design for a well-known blog, The Brilliance. Abloh first met popular musician Kanye West while working on his designs at a Chicago print shop<\/p>\n
Career2009\u20132013: Rise to prominence<\/strong><\/p>\nAfter graduating from university, Abloh interned at Fendi in the same class as rapper Kanye West in 2009. Placed in the company\u2019s Rome, Italy office, the two began a collaborative relationship. During his collaborative work with the rapper and designer, he caught the eye of the Louis Vuitton CEO, Michael Burke, through his work at Fendi.<\/p>\n
Later that year, Abloh and West\u2019s artistic partner, Don C, launched a retail store, called the RSVP Gallery, located in Chicago. Their founded retail space became known for carrying a mixture of fashion apparel, and for its reflection of Virgil\u2019s style on his design for the store interior.<\/p>\n
A year later, West appointed Abloh the creative director of his creative agency, DONDA. In 2011, West asked him to serve as the artistic director for the 2011 Jay-Z\/West album Watch the Throne. In 2012, Abloh launched his first company, Pyrex Vision.<\/p>\n
Abloh purchased deadstock clothing from Ralph Lauren for $40, screen-printed designs on them, and sold them for prices upward of $550. The stated goal of Pyrex Vision was to represent the importance of youth culture, by centering the designs around a garment that most youth would notice from gym class. Virgil\u2019s ideas could be clearly geared around the importance of the now. He closed the company down a year later as he did not intend it to be a commercial enterprise but an artistic experiment.<\/p>\n
2013\u20132017: Off-White and mainstream success<\/strong><\/p>\nAbloh founded his first fashion house and second business overall in 2013 with the high-end streetwear brand Off-White, designing a logo inspired by Ben Kelly.<\/p>\n
Based in Milan, Italy, the company was described by Abloh as \u201cthe gray area between black and white as the color off-white\u201d to investors and fashion critics.<\/p>\n
During the launch of his brand, he received help from the New Guards Group, which also assisted many other designers and brands, such as Palm Angels, Heron Preston, and Marcelo Burlon.<\/p>\n
Abloh\u2019s brand leads towards a widespread gain of attention for his apparel beginning in Paris, then expanding to China, Tokyo, Japan, and the United States.<\/p>\n
The clothing line can be identified through its use of quotation marks, zip-ties, capital letters, and barricade tape.<\/p>\n
He launched the company\u2019s women\u2019s wear line in 2014 and showed the collections at the Paris Fashion Week. His line was selected as a finalist for the LVMH Prize, an industry award, but lost to Marques\u2019Almeida and Jacquemus.<\/p>\n
Abloh launched his first concept store for Off-White in Tokyo, Japan, where he started the company\u2019s furniture arm, Grey Area.<\/p>\n
In 2017, he was asked to design a new collection in conjunction with Nike entitled \u201cThe Ten\u201d where he re-designed a variety of the company\u2019s best-selling shoes.<\/p>\n
Through Abloh\u2019s re-designing he exercised his self-made rule of only editing the shoes 3% of the way because he was intrigued by still maintaining the original design of the shoe.<\/p>\n
2013\u20132018: Off-White and collaborations<\/strong><\/p>\nVirgil also partnered up with the Swedish furniture company IKEA to design furniture for apartments and houses also easy to carry tote bags imprinted sculptures in the middle. The collection was named Markerad, which is a Swedish word meaning \u201cclear-cut; crisp; pronounced\u201d, and was released in 2019.<\/p>\n
Virgil envisions the collection to include practical furniture that features contemporary designs. Abloh has worked towards fulfilling his vision for the collection by sketching out drafts of generic pieces of furniture while adding his own aesthetics to the designs by using a doorstop to level out furniture items.<\/p>\n
Abloh worked on designs for chairs, coffee tables, beds, storage cabinets, mirrors, and carpets apart of his collaboration with IKEA.<\/p>\n
Abloh uses quotation marks to convey detachment from society and social norms.<\/p>\n
During the rise in neo-nationalism in 2017 Abloh worked with conceptual artist Jenny Holzer to create a line emphasizing the positive aspects of immigration, cultural integration, and globalization. In December 2017, he worked with Holzer again to design T-shirts for Planned Parenthood in response to the Women\u2019s March on Washington.<\/p>\n
2018\u2013present: Louis Vuitton<\/strong><\/p>\nOn March 25, 2018, Abloh was named artistic director of Louis Vuitton\u2019s menswear ready wear line, marking him the first person of African descent to lead the brand\u2019s menswear line, as well as one of the few black designers at the helm of a major French fashion house.<\/p>\n
Upon his acceptance of the position, he stated, \u201cIt is an honor for me to accept this position. I find the heritage and creative integrity of the house are key inspirations and will look to reference them both while drawing parallels to modern times\u201d.<\/p>\n
Abloh showed his first collection for Louis Vuitton at the 2018 Men\u2019s Fashion Week at the Palais-Royal gardens in Paris.<\/p>\n
Rihanna was the first person to wear Abloh before the show.<\/p>\n
\nPlayboi Carti, Steve Lacy, A$AP Nast, Dev Hynes, and Kid Cudi walked for the fashion show.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Playboi Carti, Steve Lacy, A$AP Nast,<\/a> Dev Hynes, and Kid Cudi walked for the fashion show.<\/p>\nAbloh has since been in high demand for his designs, creating an original outfit designed for Serena Williams to wear throughout the 2018 US Open, a collaboration with Nike.<\/p>\n
On June 5, 2018, Virgil Abloh released a special collaboration with the luggage manufacturer Rimowa, a transparent suitcase in limited edition.<\/p>\n
In March 2019, Abloh collaborated with Ikea to start making furniture for millennials, ranging from cabinets, rugs, coffee tables, and chairs.<\/p>\n
Abloh has incorporated different elements of style, such as his quotation marks around certain words and putting it on different articles of clothing, and in this case different types of furniture.<\/p>\n
For example, Abloh created a \u201cDoor Stop Interruption\u201d on a chair by adding a doorstop on one of the chair legs to make it elevated. One of Abloh\u2019s most popular items is the Frakta Bag. It is beige with the text \u201cSCULPTURE\u201d imprinted on the side.<\/p>\n
Virgil teamed up with SSENSE to release a workout collection on March 29, 2019. This collection contains a variety of workout clothes ranging from; matching leggings and sports bras, athletic sweaters, and crop tops.<\/p>\n
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