VIRGIL ABLOH
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Mixing the new with the old, or making the old new shows how fashion can be reenergised. Yes, all fashion designers do create different clothes with different styles and different shapes but that type of different is normal. Looking at Virgil Abloh’s clothing silhouettes you instantly know they are unlike any others.
Virgil Abloh was born 1980 and grew up in Chicago. He obtained a bachelor degree in civil engineering and went on to study architecture. I feel these facts may link with his tastes and designs in his clothing. After 2 years, he started to focus on fashion.
In 2012 he launched a fashion brand called ‘Pyrex Vision’ which consisted of screen printed logos on Champion t-shirts and dead stock Ralph Lauren rugby shirts. In 2013 Pyrex then shuttered; Virgil then went on to launch ‘OFF-WHITE’. His designs for the brand are similar to his pervious designs for Pyrex with the printed logos on clothing.
This is where I feel his time studying engineering and architecture come in. OFF-WHITE consists of large printed, diagonal stripes as its trademark design with a colour palette of black, white, yellow and red. When printed on the clothing they look like hazard tape and warning patterns which you would see at a building site, this showing his taste in engineering and architecture is still there. The stripes can also show his interest in music as Virgil is also a DJ under the alias Flat-White. The reasoning I feel his designs link to his interest in music is because of a Manchester club called Hacienda. The layout of the club and the patterns on the walls and columns are the exact same as the ones on his Off-White clothing.
“All of a sudden I realised that I don’t love modern design – I like shabby chic things. I like dirty sneakers; things that are worn and used and I find a beauty in that, but I come from a culture that favours the pristine and the box-fresh. I’m working with those opposing ideals to try and make something new.”
Virgil also gives his designs a ‘used’ look by making some of them look distressed and damaged whilst giving them a new and modern look to them. This is why I see him as a radical designer; the ideas and views he has have an interesting outcome when he puts them on paper and makes them a reality.
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