Virgil By Design
On September 30, 1980, Nee and Eunice Abloh welcomed their first son into the world. In the Chicago suburb of Rockford, the immigrants from Ghana brought their baby boy home to his new bedroom. Wrapped in a swaddle and placed in a crib like every other ordinary newborn, he would spend his childhood like any other suburban kid in America.
Skateboarding, playing sports like soccer, hanging out in malls and music stores would be the early interests of young Virgil Abloh. Common interests in the neighborhood. Common interests that led to an uncommon trajectory that changed the world.
From the suburbs of Chicago in the home of West African immigrants, Virgil Abloh would go on to become one of the world’s most influential fashion designers. His creativity, design, and influence inspired sweeping changes in the fashion and streetwear world all across the globe. Some submit that he is the most influential designer to ever live.
In 2018, Time Magazine would name him one of the Top 100 influential people in the world. He would become the Artistic Director for Louis Vuitton’s menswear, the first African American to hold the role. Alongside his work with LVMH, he was the Creative Director for Donda, the creative agency for famous music artist Kanye West. He would go on to collaborate with major brands such as Nike, Ikea, Levi’s and Mercedes Benz. In the backdrop of all of those opportunities he is most known for the creation of his fashion collective: Off-White. In 2013 he became the Chief Executive Officer of Off-White, a Milan based fashion house that would change the streetwear industry.
When we hear the stories of emerging leaders like Virgil Abloh it’s hard to comprehend how someone rises to that level of influence. It’s hard to imagine someone could end up in stratospheres like that and be from the common suburbs of the Midwest portion of the United States.
One Opportunity Away
World fashion influencers? Rubbing shoulders with titans of the music industry? There’s no way someone like that could come from the cul-de-sac down the street. The reality is most of us are uncomfortable with the idea of what can be possible over the course of decades of our stories. We prefer the stories of the “overnight successes.” Why? Because if we explain someone else as an overnight success we don’t have to confront our lack of design in our own life. We don’t have to take on a posture of readiness for our own breakthroughs. We take on no responsibility for designing our path to our dreams, we take no responsibility for being ready when the opportunity comes.
Any aspiring artist, athlete, musician, creator, or leader is often tempted with desire for a big breakthrough. Most people dream of a breakthrough moment when everything will change. We long for the instant when “everything changes.” But the question for emerging leaders is - are you in a position of readiness for “everything to change?”
Consider for a moment when God parted the Red Sea for Moses in the Old Testament, Moses wasn’t a few miles away.
“Be there in a minute!”
“Got a late start! My eta is 12 min!”
“Packing my stuff! On my way!”
No he was right at the water’s edge.
Prepared. Ready for a breakthrough either way. Design is all about moving your lifestyle closer to your dream. It doesn’t guarantee that your dream will come true. It just puts you in a position of readiness. There’s no greater person to learn the intricacies of design from than Virgil Abloh. Every leader must take on the skills of a designer in order to move from where they are to where they want to be.
“When it comes to self-expression. Those things that hold you back from executing your dream, they’re myths. They’re in your head. It took me a long period to question myself. “Am I going to believe that I can’t be a designer at the highest level. Am I going to believe that I’m supposed to make printed t-shirts called streetwear. I’m going to do that. I’m going to keep doing it for a long time. Until the one opportunity comes when I have to say yes or no. I’m going to say yes. I'm gonna show up on time. I'm going to do my best. And that will lead to another opportunity.
“I hope people see in my narrative that anything is possible and there are barriers that are meant to be jumped over.”
“There’s No Consequence.”
As a kid in Chicago in the 1990’s Virgil was in the crosshairs of the rise of Michael Jordan and sneakerware. He began to cultivate a love for shoes and art. Often drawing shoe designs and ideas inspired by hip-hop music, the Chicago Bulls and art (A dynamic trio). Rarely short on courage, Virgil even sent mock designs to Nike Headquarters for shoe ideas only to find out they didn’t accept design proposals from kids.
As he matured in his interests it became clear Virgil wanted to become an artist. Inspired by his mother’s love for clothing design he would watch her work as a seamstress. Unsure what career paths looked liked for him he had shown an interest in art.
The son of first generation immigrants, his parents wanted him to take a more traditional path. Traveling the world from West Africa and forging a new life in the United States will do that to a young couple. They encouraged him to always pursue his passions, but also wanted him to rely on an education and an income stream.
“There’s a lot of starving artists out there. Why don’t you study engineering instead?”
Virgil obliged. Mainly because he had no idea what he wanted to do or where he wanted to go.
After graduating from Catholic high school in 1998. Virgil enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to pursue a degree in Civil Engineering. Little did he know at the time his studying of how roads and bridges are built in communities would build bridges and roads for the global fashion community.
Effective depth. Pattern loadings. Allowable stress design.
All terms for the Civil Engineer. Instead these terms would become the beginning of a design toolbox Virgil would take with him in his cross domain life as a creator.
After graduating from Wisconsin-Madison in 2002 with a degree in Civil Engineering, Virgil was still unsure what the design would be for his career and vocation. He decided to keep learning and pursuing his own curiosities.
“The Domino Effect”
One of Virgil Abloh’s design fundamentals was the idea of finding the domino effect. Years later after his rise to stardom, Virgil Abloh gave a keynote lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he explained many of his design fundamentals.
“I want everyone with ambition to find the domino effect. Create the project and see what happens.”
The domino effect is the well known adage that tipping one domino in a long line sets off a series of events as all dominos begin to fall. The greatest obstacle for an emerging leader when it comes to design is to get the plan started. Significant projects aren’t started and finished in the same swing. We’ve got to get some momentum going.
For Virgil Abloh the real momentum in his trajectory started to form with the creation of his first fashion brand - Fort Home. No, this brand didn’t “take off.” In fact it hardly sold anything at all. But it gave him the start he needed in his process.
“The process and the end product are equally as valuable. I embrace imperfection as much as the pursuit of perfection.”
He enrolled at the Illinois-Institute of Technology. Having taken inspiration from the Engineering world and added it to his toolbox, this time he wanted to pursue another curiosity - Architecture.
Always a student who followed what piqued his interest, Virgil took education seriously. But his education was on his terms. While classmates frantically stressed about how they were going to be able to leverage this training and degree to land jobs at high-paying architecture firms, Virgil just sought to learn.
One day early in his graduate school class an old professor - the lifetime academic type who lived to steal the youthful energy from his students, spoke to his class of aspiring architects - Virgil Abloh being one of them.
“You all realize that only 3% of you will actually build buildings someday.”
As the class of aspiring architects sat stunned in disbelief at the news this professor had just shared. Virgil thought to himself:
“I didn’t come here to learn about building buildings. The next three years of graduate school are going to be a lot of fun for me compared to everyone else seeking a certain kind of acceptance from the brutal field of architecture.”
Virgil came to learn. Not to learn just how to design buildings, but to learn the principles of design that could be applied to all of his creative interests. Whether engineering, architecture, t-shirts, or music, Virgil wanted to get better at designing.
Throughout his time in graduate school he continued to cultivate his own interests. Always a renaissance man, he kept his toes dipped in Hip-Hop music, art and clothing. Never overly placing his identity in one thing, he continued to pursue what made him curious. On the side he designed t-shirts and wrote about fashion and design for a widely popular fashion blog, The Brilliance. After designing a few t-shirts he began to design a little more formally under his first streetwear brand called Fort Home.
The dominos started to fall for Virgil Abloh.
The first t-shirt he made for Fort Home showcased the only font he had available on his student account for an Adobe Design membership. It’s often said - “Success is doing the best you can with what you’ve got, where you’re at.” The humble beginnings of one of the world’s most innovative fashion designers started with the stock font available in the student version of Adobe Design. Use what you have. Start small. He hosted a few pop-up shops but couldn’t get any interest in his t-shirt brand beyond a few friends in his network. An opportunity not wasted, experience is expensive to acquire.
The Parting of the Red Sea
While finishing his graduate degree, and toying around with t-shirt design with Fort Home, Virgil got a side job at a t-shirt printing company called Custom Kings. While working at Custom Kings he was introduced to a designer named Don C….