{"id":21461,"date":"2022-06-24T14:13:36","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T10:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/?post_type=articles&#038;p=21461"},"modified":"2022-06-24T17:08:04","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T13:08:04","slug":"virgil-abloh-legacy-the-journey","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/articles\/virgil-abloh-legacy-the-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen To Virgil Abloh Talk About Purpose, Passion, Participation, And Point Of View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span class=\"call-to-action-style\">Listen to Virgil Abloh speak to GRAZIA\u2019s Editor-in-Chief Alison Tay in a recorded conversation that now lives in his personal archive. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1080px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-21461-1\" width=\"1080\" height=\"1920\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2022\/06\/Untitled-2.mp4?_=1\" \/><\/video><\/div>\n<p>The most unusual request of my career came from Virgil\u2019s camp in 2017: \u201cMay we receive the recording of the interview for Virgil Abloh\u2019s personal archive?\u201d Er, why? \u201cVirgil is building a sound museum,\u201d and our conversation would be considered for his \u201cFigures of Speech\u201d retrospective opening in his home city of Chicago three years later.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m all about making sure that my voice is crystal clear on how I creatively see the world,\u201d Virgil told me during our discussion about purpose that now, poignantly provides us with his roadmap for making a meaningful creative contribution. \u201cI encourage everyone with a passion in any sort of field, to start a project and participate in it. So, my social responsibility is using my outlet as a tool to speak and encourage others to follow their art form.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_21462\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-21462\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-21462\" src=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2022\/04\/virgil-abloh-grazia.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"1260\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-21462\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Courtesy of Louis Vuitton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Looking back, the way that Virgil lived his life \u2013 whether consciously or unconsciously \u2013 can be viewed as a master class in leaving a legacy, from his refusal to be defined by any single one of his artistic pursuits to the relentless proliferation of Off-White collaborations that left no category or creative cohort unturned. \u201cThe way I see it is like, life is too short and it cuts off inspiration if you limit yourself. So to the music world I can be one thing, and to the fashion world, I can be one thing. I don\u2019t operate in either or specifically. That\u2019s where I found creative freedom.\u201d He mused, \u201cI think freedom exists on many levels, whether that\u2019s creatively or vocationally, mentally. So, to truly be creative, you have to be open to a number of opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This collective spirit continued into his career as men\u2019s artistic director at Louis Vuitton where he brought in Nigo and the NBA on board, and reimagined the Nike Air Force 1. \u201cIn essence, I\u2019m just interested in participating rather than being complacent,\u201d he shrugged. \u201cIf that makes me a contributor, I would agree with that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Alua Arthur, death doula, founder of the end-of-life support community Going with Grace, and a fellow Ghanaian in the diaspora, \u201cVirgil\u2019s body of work is something that future generations will stand upon. What he\u2019s done is to create a foundation \u2013 built on the foundation of others that came before him \u2013 ultimately for other people to push culture forward, to push humanity forward. And that\u2019s the best that we can ask from a legacy \u2013 something that touches others, but also that creates something to enable future generations to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If we choose to assign meaning to our journey in this way, what are our first steps? \u201cIt involves having some clarity on who you are, who you\u2019ve become as a result of all your experiences, what your particular gifts, skills, talents are, and the ways in which you\u2019ve used those in service of humanity in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In real terms, Alua urges us to consider: \u201cWill this action that I want to take today get me closer to that person I want to meet on my deathbed? Will this inaction get me closer to that person I want to be on my deathbed? Will it even matter on my deathbed?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And when it comes to end-of-life planning, in addition to advance directives such as power attorney and a living will, Alua advises creatives to leave clear instructions for what\u2019s to happen to your work. \u201cIt\u2019s important to decide what you want done with the art after you die. Sell it? Burn it? What about all the art that we find afterward that isn\u2019t finished?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>News of Virgil\u2019s broke as editors from around the world were boarding planes to Miami for the Louis Vuitton Menswear SS2022 spin-off show, which became a posthumous presentation renamed Virgil Was Here. And in January 2022, Sotheby\u2019s auctioned 200 special-edition pairs of Louis Vuitton and Nike \u201cAir Force 1\u201d by Virgil Abloh sneakers raising $20 million to date with proceeds going to The Virgil Abloh\u2122 \u201cPost-Modern\u201d Scholarship Fund for the education of academically promising students of Black, African-American, or African descent.<\/p>\n<p>Comparisons were immediately drawn between Virgil and Chadwick Boseman who, too, kept his terminal cancer diagnosis out of the public eye and continued to work until the end. \u201cDeath is a powerful motivator,\u201d Alua observes. \u201cI can imagine that knowing your death is not that far off in the distance can encourage you to produce at a very, very high rate.\u201d And although death is inevitable and universal, when it comes to Virgil and Chadwick, there\u2019s also an element of intersectionality at play in this process.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously I know nothing about what both of them dealt with privately, but when it comes to black people, and men in particular, in the history of America, our bodies have always been considered as commodities, and certainly judged by what we\u2019re able to create and produce. It\u2019s a history of slavery. That\u2019s why we were stolen. So I can\u2019t help but wonder if there was an expectation when we\u2019re looking at it from the outside that assumes, \u2018Well, of course, they\u2019re going produce until they die. That\u2019s what black people are supposed to do.\u2019\u201d Alua stresses, \u201cI\u2019m using air quotes\u201d. Of course. This is Virgil Abloh, after all. \u201cI will say, particularly for black people and people of colour, it\u2019s a challenge not placing productivity at the centre of our identity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Virgil\u2019s work ethic bore this out. \u201cPart of the motivation is to work hard,\u201d he admitted. \u201cThis young generation needs to put in the same amount of thoughtful work \u2013 thought and work \u2013 as the generation before. My fashion influences were everyone from Margiela to McQueen, to Phoebe Philo, to Karl Lagerfeld, and John Galliano. I\u2019m born at a different time, my aesthetic comes from a different DNA, my value system is different, but I still want to have a career that does justice to the work that they did. So that\u2019s my focus: to inspire others, with different points of view and different tastes, to make a mark.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A fear that keeps me awake at night is that our moment in fashion won\u2019t be remembered in the same era-defining way as the decades before us \u2013 a concern I confessed to Virgil. His response? \u201cEvery art movement is a collective. It wasn\u2019t just Caravaggio that started the Renaissance. It wasn\u2019t just Warhol. These things happen culturally at the same time. And hopefully, collectively, we end up with something that is valuable, so you can sleep at night,\u201d he laughed. We both can now. Rest easy, Virgil.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"call-to-action-style\"><em>This essay is published in the third edition of GRAZIA Middle East. Click\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/daily-edit\/the-journey\/\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a> to discover more from THE JOURNEY.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":21463,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[260,65,35,3209,4254],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v18.5 (Yoast SEO v20.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Virgil Abloh Sound Museum: Purpose, Passion &amp; Point Of View<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our collection of essays seeking to define the seemingly undefinable - the cultural and intersectional impact of the life and creative contribution of Virgil Abloh.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/articles\/virgil-abloh-legacy-the-journey\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Listen To Virgil Abloh Talk About Purpose, Passion, Participation, And Point Of View\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our collection of essays seeking to define the seemingly undefinable - 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