Virgil Abloh, photographed by Gregory Harris.
How does one write a record of the most prolific designers of our time? That was a question on Robin Givhan’s mind when she began crafting Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh, a new biography on the late great fashion kingpin, who succumbed to cancer complications in 2021. His story was one of hard work, curiosity, and an impressive knack for linking and building. But what makes Givhan’s book so compelling is not only her analysis of the designer’s creativity and ambition, but the historical context she builds around it—a reminder why the Pulitzer-winning writer is an American icon in her own right. Ahead of the book’s release, Vanessa Friedman, another award-winning fashion journo (and sometimes-critic of Abloh) got on the phone with Givhan to discuss the designer’s lasting impact on fashion—from Been Trill to Louis Vuitton and beyond.
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VANESSA FRIEDMAN: I was interested in how you started the book with that Off-White show on Rue Cambon, which was such a mob scene. We were both there and kind of horrified by the whole thing, the insanity of the experience. How do you think about that now versus in that moment?
ROVIN GIVHAN: I’d seen other Off-White shows but I’d never experienced anything close to that—I even got whacked in the head. At that point, you’re like, “This is more than just fashion.” [Laughs] I was pretty critical of those collections, and honestly, I still don’t quite get the Princess Diana one. But that scrum told me that there’s something his fans are seeing and loving that I’m missing.
FRIEDMAN: After that, did you start thinking about Virgil differently?
GIVHAN: My opinions didn’t change immediately, but it was at that time when Olivier [Rousteing] was at Balmain and I was having a similar—
FRIEDMAN: “I don’t get this.” [Laughs]
GIVHAN: Yeah. I remember looking at those collections on Instagram and having a completely different reaction. That’s when this lightbulb went off and I was like, “Okay, this show isn’t for the people who are sitting in this room, this show is for social media where everything looks so much better.”
FRIEDMAN: I’ve always felt that, as a critic, if you can identify who the clothes are for and they’re successful for those people, it really doesn’t matter if you like them or not.
GIVHAN: Yep. People always ask me, “Who’s your favorite designer?” And my response is always, “The designer who gives me the most interesting thing to write about.” Who I would go into a store and buy clothes from—
FRIEDMAN: Is irrelevant.
GIVHAN: Someone can put on a show, and I could be sitting there in my little shopper heart swooning, but it doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m going to write about.
FRIEDMAN: Correct. Did you know Virgil at that point?
GIVHAN: The first time I met him was at the LVMH Prize, which was another fashion scrum. But our relationship was very professional. I wasn’t in his social circle or anything like that. Later, I had a chance to interview him and facilitate a conversation he had with a group of students for the Fashion Scholarship Fund. That’s when I saw the Virgil that captivated the people in that scrum. He was so inspiring and enthusiastic. Even though he was in his late 30s, he still had this ability to connect with 17 year olds.
FRIEDMAN: What was that ability?
GIVHAN: It was this way of talking about the industry without all the protective layers people of his caliber often bring. Like when he gave a lecture at Columbia, he showed a Nike prototype he was working on and was like, “I’m sure I’m violating all kinds of NDAs just by having this here,” and then literally tossed the sneaker into the audience. Later, he was like, “Wait, someone give me the sneaker back. I need it.”
FRIEDMAN: I was really struck by the point you made that he was a designer who endlessly reworked other people’s ideas, which is one of the reasons people like you and me were critical of his shows. I called it fashion karaoke. But he also had a very active legal team of his own.
GIVHAN: [Laughs] Someone from The Times had made a list of all the lawsuits and trademarks that Off-White has negotiated. It was so ironic to me. He’s talking about, “If you change an existing product by three percent, then it’s something new.” Copyright law doesn’t work that way, and he was copywriting everything. He had a copyright on the red zip ties. He wanted to copyright “FOR WALKING,” which he had put on a pair of boots.
FRIEDMAN: What was that about?
GIVHAN: Some of it was Virgil working out his own philosophy about design in real time. He was a very chatty guy, and sometimes he would contradict himself within the same speech or the same paragraph. It wasn’t because he didn’t know what he was saying, it was because you were hearing the rough draft of all of his philosophical musings about design, about ownership, about luxury. He was taking this Tumblr-like approach to fashion, but he also recognized that he was building a business. And when you build a business, you need trademarks.
FRIEDMAN: The thing I found interesting was how undefensive he was. He was really interested in engaging with people, including people who were critical of him—which often put the critical person on the back foot. You’re like, “Why do you want to talk to me? I said mean things about you.” It’s incredibly disarming and very strategic and un-fashion.
GIVHAN: Very un-fashion. Being willing to put things out knowing it’s not perfect is the antithesis of the mythology of the tortured creative. Part of it was a way of freeing himself from the burdens of perfectionism, but it was also an incredible defensive mechanism because it allowed him to say, “If you don’t like that, no worries. It wasn’t even the finished idea.”
FRIEDMAN: When you were doing the research, how complicated was it sifting through all of his output? Because there are designers who are relatively private, and then there’s Virgil who was just talking all the time—
GIVHAN: To anyone. [Laughs]
FRIEDMAN: On every platform. He was making speeches, he was writing pamphlets about his own dictionary. There’s a lot of words to make sense of.
GIVHAN: There’s a book to be written about Virgil’s interest in music and DJing. There is a book to be written about Virgil’s dabblings in fine arts. There’s a book to be written about his web of friends. One of the hardest things was saying, “Okay, I’m focused on fashion Virgil,” because otherwise it would’ve taken 10 years and 800 pages.
FRIEDMAN: Do you think fashion Virgil was the main Virgil?
GIVHAN: I think it was the Virgil that allowed him to do all the other things. I think fashion Virgil was where a lot of these disparate interests were poured, and his success in fashion then allowed for these other possibilities. I don’t think that he, for instance, would’ve been able to do the furniture and the installations and galleries had he not created this reputation within the world of fashion. I also don’t think that he would have been able to do fashion if he didn’t have a DJ’s mentality. You see in the way that he approached clothing. It’s like, “You don’t have to write the lyrics, you can just throw in some cool beats and you’ve got a whole new thing.”
FRIEDMAN: It was incredible to think of that group of people he was friends with that Kanye, Ye brought together. Back in the day when it was Heron Preston, Matthew Williams, Virgil, Ye, Jerry Lorenzo. It was an incredibly rich friend group.
GIVHAN: It speaks to the depth of creativity that comes out of Chicago. One of the hardest things was, “How does Kanye fit into this story?” He’s a strand that’s woven throughout the whole thing. But in that contained period, the depths of Kanye’s confidence and creativity was something to see. If you were swept up into that orbit, it could be incredibly energizing because this was someone who not only had ambition, but coming off of those first few albums, the means to make a lot of things happen.
FRIEDMAN: And yet Virgil’s the one who ended up at Vuitton.
GIVHAN: It was always going to be Virgil. You could see it because of the temperament. You could see it in the way Virgil engaged with the industry.
FRIEDMAN: You talk about Virgil as the palatable Black man for an entirely white industry. How much do you think he was aware of that?
GIVHAN: I think he was very aware of it. You had to be. I was always struck by the fact that people would always describe him as the son of Ghanaian immigrants. They wouldn’t describe him as simply African American, which is equally accurate. It felt like that was a way of distinguishing him from the burdens of the history of slavery, the history of racism in the U.S. It made him seem less damaged.
FRIEDMAN: Did he describe himself that way?
GIVHAN: He didn’t describe himself that way, but I never had the chance to ask him about it. I was able to talk to some people who were also the children of African immigrants who talked to Virgil. Their description of the power of education as this armor against racism and anti-immigrant fervor was really interesting. The idea that, if you have in your mind what it means to grow up in a world in which everyone looks like you, that gives you an incredible sense of, “I can do anything because I have seen people who look like me do anything.” One of those people said, “Growing up as a Black man in Africa is like growing up like a white man in America.”
FRIEDMAN: Do you think it made a difference for Europeans to think of him that way?
GIVHAN: I do. And I’ve always been struck by how often Black models who rise to the top of the fashion industry are either from the continent or are Afro-Caribbean.
FRIEDMAN: What do you think that’s about?
GIVHAN: I think some of it’s subconscious. I think there is still a little bit of exoticism at play. I also think that, in some ways, it’s a little easier on the conscience.
FRIEDMAN: I was also struck by the point you made that Virgil, when he was at Vuitton and also at Off-White, did make a point of working with a lot of Black talent. He worked with Ib [Kamara], he had people in the design studio, he’d established the Fashion Scholarship Fund. And then when Pharrell came in, it felt different. That first show at Vuitton, the design team was almost entirely white. How much sticking power do you think Virgil’s door opening has?
GIVHAN: I wish I could say that Virgil changed everything forever, but I don’t think that. I think he pushed the doors open a bit. I think he raised the awareness in some executives. But the old ways are really difficult to move past. Even with Pharrell, I felt like a lesson was learned, but it wasn’t the one that I would’ve liked fashion to have learned.
FRIEDMAN: Okay, elaborate on that one.
GIVHAN: [Laughs] I thought the wonderful thing that people were inspired by with Virgil was, here’s this outsider who kept at it. He was the nice guy who won. And instead of taking that as a lesson of, “Don’t go for the most obvious choice. Think about people who are bringing new ideas to the table.” In choosing Pharrell—who is very talented and creative—they didn’t look very far. They basically looked to their front row, to the guy in diamond-encrusted sunglasses and said, “You’ve got great style. You’ve built these fashion brands. Come on in.” So to me, it was not a win for the little guy, it was an opportunity for a celebrity to expand their empire and for Vuitton to expand its reach.
FRIEDMAN: How much do you think that was about people being scared, not wanting to take a job that had been shaped by Virgil, who died in a way that shocked most people? Most of us had no idea that he was as sick as he was. People thought, “Oh, he’s flown around the world too much. He’s got—”
GIVHAN: Exhaustion.
FRIEDMAN: Yeah.
GIVHAN: I felt like it was a bit of this belief that Virgil was such a rare bird that not only could he never be duplicated, but why even try? And yes, he was a rare bird, but there’s a lot of rare birds out there, you just have to look for them. And in some ways, it was very easy to find Virgil. He was standing right there, next to Kanye. [Laughs]
FRIEDMAN: I had no idea he wanted Givenchy. That was an incredible story.
GIVHAN: It also fed right into the, “Okay, he believed he could do anything and should be able to do anything.” That’s the thing that was fascinating to me, because so many times you have people—not to harangue white men—but there’s this level of ownership where they assume they are the best person to do something. So it was impressive to see Virgil say, “I want to do this. I can do this. And frankly, I think I’m a great person to do this.”
FRIEDMAN: Right, and not be afraid to ask for it.
GIVHAN: I’m curious about the first time you met Virgil.
FRIEDMAN: We had this weird back and forth on Twitter after I wrote that story saying, “Is he the Karl Lagerfeld of his generation?” Which a lot of people freaked out about. He posted a weird Joseph Beuys photo from this series where he’s locked himself in a room and there’s a coyote tearing at his clothes. And then he said, “I have to give a whole talk at Harvard about this.” And then I said, “Come do it at The Times,” totally sincerely. People were like, “It’s on.” [Laughs] I was like, “No, no, it’s not on. It’s fine.”
GIVHAN: It’s also perfect that the encounter was via social media, as is Virgil’s way.
FRIEDMAN: I felt like it was reflective. He had these incredibly broad reference points. He was very smart and very cultured.
GIVHAN: And I love the way that he would refer to people as mentors, even if they never considered themselves to be his mentor. He had this idea that you can learn from every person—the kid on the street, the kid on Instagram, the guy in the boardroom.
FRIEDMAN: And the idea of sharing his good fortune. He was lucky. He made his luck, but he was the right person at the right cultural moment. Obviously there were Black designers that came before him. There was Ozwald Boateng, Edward Buchanan, but none of them had the fame or recognition he had.
GIVHAN: The reason I was so interested in going back and talking to those guys was because each of them made history in their own way. The power of social media to blast out the enthusiasm and rally the troops was a tremendous advantage that Virgil had. It also just reminded me the degree to which fashion had long expanded outside of the little bubble it was in back when Edward went to Bottega. And it also reflected the degree to which menswear had become so influential in fashion. The world of sneakers was a huge part of that. It said a lot about just how things had changed.
FRIEDMAN: I think it’s social media, but it’s also the rise of the brand over everything. We now live in this time of brands as the dominant global language. And that was not as true even 10, 15 years ago.
GIVHAN: Yeah. I still marvel when I see people on the street in a sweatshirt or a T-shirt I know they have paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for. It boggles my mind because you just bought a name, you didn’t buy any design expertise. But it’s treated in the same way that people wear their favorite sports team jersey. They’re just like, “I’m team Givenchy with the giant Rottweiler on my T-shirt.”
FRIEDMAN: Speaking of sneakers and T-shirts, you also made the point that Virgil, like many Black designers, was stuck in this urban streetwear box, especially when he was doing Off-White, even though the clothes weren’t just that. He actually was not a “street” person at all. He was very suburban.
GIVHAN: [Laughs] Yes. Suburban cul-de-sac. I think if there is a lasting impact, it’s that he helped free Black designers from getting stuck with those kinds of labels. I don’t think that Christopher John Rogers, for example, is in danger of being stuck with that.
FRIEDMAN: Or Grace Wales Bonner. But if you look at the 17 new designers that are showing up at brands this year, 15 of them are white men. There’s two women. They’re people who’ve run brands before who are very safe choices. It feels like a reversion to the norm as opposed to taking the next step.
GIVHAN: I feel like for every inch forward that the industry makes, it takes a giant leap back. But Virgil’s presence has created a pipeline for young creative people who’ve felt distanced from the industry. Even though there are prizes and scholarship funds and foundations, so many people couldn’t even conceive of where to go to find something like that. The fact that his scholarship reaches out to kids who are not in design school is hugely important. But the idea of looking broadly for those big jobs, there’s still this idea that Virgil was a rarity.
FRIEDMAN: I give Michael Burke a lot of credit for having the balls and the insight to take what was seen as a risk in appointing him.
GIVHAN: Yeah. I honestly still don’t fully grasp what made him say, “I’m going to do this.”
FRIEDMAN: It makes you realize how important those gatekeepers are. We tend to focus on the designer, but the CEOs have to get on board too. And they tend to be much more averse to coloring outside the lines.
GIVHAN: And when I think about Michael Burke, I think about how long his relationship with [Bernard] Arnault was, how long he’d been at LVMH. I don’t see a new CEO popping in and saying, “Yeah, I’m going to take this risk.” It was the fact that he felt incredibly trusted in making a decision like that.
FRIEDMAN: And he understood that fashion needs to get shaken up. When you were thinking about writing the book, did you feel any responsibility toward recording this moment in time so that as fashion reverts to its old self, there is this flag planted saying, “Here was someone who embodied a new way of thinking”?
GIVHAN: I knew that the book was going to end with Pharrell’s first Vuitton show. And I wanted that slice of time in fashion to be documented in order to say, “In this brief window, fashion was devoted to change in a real way.” I also think that a lot of change happened because people went with their gut. That says a lot.
FRIEDMAN: You did seem somewhat ambivalent about the appointment of Pharrell, another designer who clearly has no formal training in clothing.
GIVHAN: I would’ve loved to have seen a designer who was not already part of the game of musical chairs be elevated, or to have seen another Virgil. I felt a bit disheartened that it was neither an unknown nor someone who’d been toiling away in the atelier. It felt a bit like a reality show.
FRIEDMAN: So many of these recent appointments were very, very safe, for understandable reasons. The global economy is super shaky, the political situation is super shaky. Brands are not making the same amount of money they used to for a whole host of reasons. But often the first thing they do in those situations is blame the designer and get a new one, when, in fact, the real takeaway from someone like Virgil is, don’t be safe. Right?
GIVHAN: Someone had asked me, “Do you think that Virgil would’ve been possible at a moment when LVMH is having a shock of financial woes?” And I think that he’d be even more possible now because you need to take a risk. And that usually bodes well for both people of color and women. The old joke is, as soon as a company is in trouble it’s time to bring the lady in. Let her see if she can fix it.
FRIEDMAN: Not this time, sadly.
GIVHAN: I know.
FRIEDMAN: If Virgil hadn’t died, where do you think he would’ve taken it all?
GIVHAN: So much has happened in the last year with subjects that touched Virgil’s career, ranging from LVMH’s finances to diversity to the idea of, “Do you sit back and be the calm, nuanced person, or do you jump in and be the rebel who turns everything over?” And I felt like, particularly during COVID, some of his collections had become more nuanced and much more self-reflective. I’d love to see how Virgil would’ve addressed a moment like this. I’d love to know if he’d still be that calm person, or if he’d start yelling.
FRIEDMAN: Because he’d also been given that big job at LVMH right before he passed away, where he was going to be allowed to float around and also touch every other brand. It would’ve been interesting to see what he did with that, whether it just became a branding game or a permit to make deeper change.
GIVHAN: I tend to think that he would have become more of a designer and relied less on branding—
FRIEDMAN: Or gotten into film.
GIVHAN: I could see him doing that. I could see him starting a record label. I could also see him delving into fine art.
FRIEDMAN: One of the interesting things to me when Ye’s implosion happened was the way that different parts of that world started thinking who got to lay claim to Virgil’s legacy. And where did Ye fit into all this?
GIVHAN: I was happy that my endpoint came before Kanye really took a turn. Virgil talked a lot about how he was the one who was interested in more varied kinds of music and fine art. Kanye was the old school, break-down-the-door kind of person. And when the two of them embraced in that famous picture from Virgil’s first show, it resonated because so many people knew what had come before. Kanye has these very complicated feelings about how he contributed to Virgil success, but I don’t think that anyone outside of that relationship can fully grasp the interdependence and the competition and the sense of loyalty.
FRIEDMAN: I have two last questions for you. One, how hard was it to let him go when you finished the book?
GIVHAN: It was hard. The story really continues because I feel like there’s constantly something new I’m learning about him. There’s so many layers and he did so much and he knew so many people. I honestly live in fear that there’s some whole other project where I’ll be like, “Wait, what? He started painting? I had no idea.”
FRIEDMAN: My last question is: how did he change you as a critic?
GIVHAN: He opened up another lane for me to think about fashion, this idea that sometimes the garment doesn’t even matter. When the story is strong enough, that itself becomes the product. What he was selling was emotion and connection. I think a lot of brands wrap that into the product, but the product is always primary.
FRIEDMAN: That’s interesting. When I met Shannon [Abloh, Virgil’s wife] the first time, which was after he died, I said, “He made me a better thinker.”
GIVHAN: He really did change the way I think about how people relate to clothing. I never thought about how it connected me to someone else. It was always, “What does it say about me in a particular context or me in a particular setting?”
FRIEDMAN: Have you heard from the family?
GIVHAN: Shannon declined to be interviewed but never threw up any flares. His parents were very kind, as were his teachers.
FRIEDMAN: I’m sure teachers loved him. I would’ve loved to see what he would’ve done with ChatGPT. AI probably would’ve sent him round the bend.
GIVHAN: I can’t even imagine the degree to which it would’ve allowed him to do even more. I still to this day do not know how he did it all.
FRIEDMAN: He didn’t sweat the small stuff.
GIVHAN: Yeah. Of course, we sweat the small stuff.
FRIEDMAN: “It’s the wrong capital letter.” [Laughs] Alright. Have a great rest of your book tour. I’ll miss you on the front lines [at fashion week].
GIVHAN: Thank you. Have a good trip. Eat at least one good meal.
FRIEDMAN: I definitely will.
Photo courtesy of Robin Givhan.
