Virgil Abloh

At a moment of unprecedented creativity in men's fashion, and continuing reflections on gender, contemporary designers are questioning established forms, seeking to liberate wearers from traditional models of masculine dress. This book combines fashion with artistic and broader cultural histories - looking at the designers, tailors and artists who have constructed and performed masculinity from the Renaissance to the present day. It traces connections across and beyond European menswear, celebrating both rich traditions and daring individualists. Divided into three parts, Undressed reveals the role of the body and underwear in fashioning masculinities. Overdressed explores the power dynamics of sartorial bravado, while Redressed deconstructs a modern masculine uniform: the black suit. Featuring a staggering range of cultural touchstones from Hercules to Virgil Abloh, Giovanni Battista Moroni to Jawaharlal Nehru, Yves Saint Laurent to Kehinde Wiley, Marcus Rashford, Marlene Dietrich and even Captain America, Fashioning Masculinities challenges our preconceptions about menswear, revealing the fascinating historical roots beneath the power, artistry and diversity of masculine attire and appearance today.

VNGRD is a clothing brand created in Milan in 2005 as the natural creative expression of a group of designers and artists who lived at the heart of the city s underground for years. Thanks to the creative direction of Giorgio Di Salvo one of the two co-founders and a mixture of extreme graphic design and unprecedented product research for the time, VNGRD quickly gained cult status, racking up collaborations with brands like Stussy, SUPER, FUCT and Slam Jam. It came to be recognized by the likes of Kanye West, also sowing the seeds that gave rise to the Octopus Brand. Thanks to a naive, uneducated stance on clothing design and the firm refusal to obey any commercial habits in a world that was transitioning from a traditional model to the current ultra-connected landscape, VNGRD challenged everything and connected many of the people who would go on to become protagonists of the zeitgeist. This is a comprehensive archive of the brand s graphic and design work, with never-before-seen pieces and behind the scenes looks. Featuring contributions from many of the friends and collaborators they have encountered during their journey, the original VNGRD team has produced a book that celebrates the history and heritage of the brand, demonstrating how its vanguardist attitude stood the test of time and predicted many of today s trends, inspiring the prime movers of the clothing world (and beyond).

A collection of essential quotations from the renowned fashion designer, DJ, and stylistAbloh-isms is a collection of essential quotations from American fashion designer, DJ, and stylist Virgil Abloh, who was a major creative figure in the worlds of pop culture and art. Abloh began his career as Kanye West’s creative director before founding the luxury streetwear label Off-White and becoming artistic director for Louis Vuitton, making Abloh the first American of African descent to hold that title at a French fashion house. Defying categorization, Abloh’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums and galleries, most notably in a major retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Gathered from interviews and other sources, this selection of compelling and memorable quotations from the designer reveals his thoughts on a wide range of subjects, including creativity, passion, innovation, race, and what it means to be an artist of his generation. Lively and thought-provoking, these quotes reflect Abloh’s unique perspective as a trailblazer in his fields.Select quotations from the book:“I believe that coincidence is key, but coincidence is energies coming towards each other. You have to be moving to meet it.”“Life is collaboration. Where I think art can be sort of misguided is that it propagates this idea of itself as a solo love affair—one person, one idea, no one else involved.”“Black influence has created a new ecosystem, which can grow and support different types of life that we couldn’t before."

In 2016, sportswear manufacturer Nike and fashion designer Virgil Abloh joined forces to create a sneaker collection celebrating 10 of the Oregon-based company’s most iconic shoes. With their project The Ten—which reimagined icons like Air Jordan 1, Air Max 90, Air Force 1, and Air Presto, among others—they reinvigorated sneaker culture. Virgil Abloh’s designs offer deep insights into engineering ingenuity and burst with cultural cachet. Drawing on the genius of the original shoe using lettering, ironic labels, collage, and sculpting techniques, Abloh played with language and sculptural elements to construct new meaning. Inspired by the wit of Dadaism, architectural theory, and avant-garde happenings, he analyzed what makes each shoe iconic and deconstructed it into an artistic assemblage, making each shoe into a piece of industrial design, a readymade sculpture, and a wearable all at once. ICONS traces Abloh’s investigative, creative process through documentation of the prototypes, original text messages from Abloh to Nike designers, and treasures from the Nike archives. We find Swooshes sliced away from Air Jordans and reapplied with tape or thread, Abloh’s typical text fragments in quotation marks on Air Force 1, and All Stars cut into pieces. We take a look behind the scenes and witness Abloh’s DIY approach, which gave each model in the Off-WhiteTM c/o Nike collection its own unique touch. His deconstructive vocabulary is reflected in the Swiss binding, which showcases an open spine and discloses the production of the book. The book documents Abloh’s cooperative way of working and reaffirms the power of print. For its design Nike and Abloh partnered with the acclaimed London-based design studio Zak Group. Together they conceived a two-part compendium, equal parts catalog and conceptual toolbox. The first part of the book presents a visual culture of sneakers while a lexicon in the second part defines the key people, places, objects, ideas, materials, and scenes from which the project grew. Texts by Nike’s Nicholas Schonberger, writer Troy Patterson, curator and historian Glenn Adamson, and Virgil Abloh himself frame the collaborative work within fashion and design history. A foreword by Hiroshi Fujiwara places the project within the historical continuum of Nike collaborators.

"What's my DNA?" Virgil Abloh asks to an overflowing auditorium at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Abloh goes on to provide his audience with a "cheat code"‚"‚€‚"advice he wishes he had received as a student. He then unpacks a series of "shortcuts" for cultivating a "personal design language." Trained as an architect and engineer, Abloh has translated the tools and techniques of his student days into the world of fashion, product design, and music. His label, Off-White, works in seeming contradictions, marrying streetwear with couture, collaborating with brands like Nike, Ikea, and the Red Cross; musicians like Lil Uzi Vert and Rihanna; and "mentors" like Rem Koolhaas. Impervious to hurdles ("They literally don't exist."), Abloh takes us behind the scenes of his design process, sharing the essentials of editing, problem-solving, and storytelling. He paints a picture of his DNA, and then flips the question: What's your DNA? Born in Rockford, Illinois in 1980, Virgil Abloh

Daniel Arsham mines lusted-after consumer goods and iconic imagery to create his conceptual objects and sculptures. The artist then casts and refinishes his work to imitate the effects of erosion and subsidence, creating monuments to our present obsessions, as if the objects were rescued from Pompeii. That same impulse toward excavation animates many of his installations, which range from layered broken walls to geodefilled caverns to melting portals. From room-collapsing environmental installations for today s leading brands and museums to elaborate set design for classical dance, Arsham twists elements of architecture to create immersive aesthetic experiences that appeal to the divided attentions of a contemporary audience. Presented as an induction manual to Arsham s covetable world, the book will provide a complete overview of his practice. Virgil Abloh discusses Arsham s contribution to a post-media artistic landscape, a thread developed by Hans Ulrich Obrist in a conversation with the artist that traces art-historical precedents. Steven Matijcio will discuss the artist s projects and collaborations, which range from sets for Merce Cunningham s dance company to clothes and sneakers with streetwear icons Ronnie Fieg and Adidas to projects with James Franco and Pharrell Williams and films with Mahershala Ali.