Make It Ours

Virgil Abloh's iconic rise to the top of the fashion industry embodied a groundbreaking transformation of the relationship between who we are and what we wear. Abloh's appointment as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton in 2018 shocked the fashion inudstry, as he became the first Black designer to serve as artistic director in the brand's 164-year history. But as Pulitzer Prize–winning culture critic Robin Givhan reveals, Abloh's story encompasses so much more than his own journey. Using Abloh's surprising path to the top of the luxury establishment, Givhan unfolds the larger story of how the cloistered, exclusive fashion world faced a revolution from below in the form of streetwear and designers unafraid to storm the gates—how their notions of what was luxury simultaneously anticipated and upended consumer preferences, and how a simple T-shirt held as much cultural power as a haute couture gown. As Givhan relays, Abloh rose during a time of existential angst for a fashion inudstry trying to make sense of its responsibilities to a diverse audience and the challenges of selling status to a generation of consumers who fetishized sneakers and prioritized comfort. How that moment came to be—how someone like Abloh, who had no formal training in patternmaking or tailoring, could come to symbolize and embody the industry's way forward—is the story at the heart of this book. Make It Ours is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh's family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from visionary Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh's mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man's rise amid a cultural moment that would upend a century's worth of ideas about luxury and taste.
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In 2018, the fashion world was shocked when Virgil Abloh was appointed as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton. In the brand's 164 year history, he would be the first black designer to serve as Artistic Director. In this brilliant, landmark book about Virgil Abloh, Make It Ours, Robin Givhan charts his surprising path to the top of the fashion world - a story that encompasses so much more than his own journey. This is at once a remarkable biography of the singular, creative force of an icon and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh's family, friends, collaborators, contemporaries, and many of the key figures of fashion's present and recent past, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man's rise amidst a cultural moment that would upend a century's worth of ideas about luxury and taste. Featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from early groundbreaking Black designers like Oswald Boateng to Abloh's mercurial but critical collaborator and mentor, Kanye West, Make It Ours moves seamlessly between high fashion and pop culture in telling the story of how the collision of these worlds irrevocably transformed our desires and beliefs about the essential connections between who we are and what we wear.