K.O.D. WHAT WE ALL NEEDED TO HEAR
Emmanuel Iheke
Jul. 27th, 2018
Virgil Abloh, an educated Ghanaian-American man has become the face of high-fashion. After graduating from from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2002 and the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2006 with degrees in civil engineering and architecture, he soon embraced his passion for fashion by interning at Fendi in 2009. It was there he would meet his future collaborative partner, Kanye West. After collaborating with West on multiple projects, Virgil founded his first clothing brand. He named it Pyrex Vision. Long story short, this black man went from Pyrex Vision streetwear to founding OFF-WHITE Inc. (google that!). Through OFF-WHITE Inc. Virgil caught the attention of Louis Vuitton, and was hired as the Men’s Artistic Director just months ago.
A black man in high fashion? What does this mean? The answer is that it means we (young urban folk) got the juice now. Now historically, the high fashion industry has been characterized as predominantly White. We have the French, the Italians, all the accents and all the bougie people that went to the fashion weeks. Now we see something totally different, like when Wizkid walked down the Versace runway to his own song. In today’s culture, hip hop has adopted fashion as a prominent theme, and high fashion designers have noticed. Not only that, but hip hop culture encapsulates fans from all over the world. Everyone is “for the culture” now, the urban culture. Hip hop is its own ethnic group, and sports fashion brands like Lebron does NIke. I can’t remember the last song I heard that did not talk about Versace, Fendi, Gucci, etc. It’s apart of the culture now. We have rich black men and women rappers buying up all the Designer and telling us fans to do it too if they want to be poppin’. Designer products have a new growing market, and it’s called young urban (blackish) people.
By hiring Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton basically just told us that they listen to Lil Uzi, Playboi Carti and Davido. They see how many people love them and want to be like them, hence the reason why they are now tapping into the new market of colored folks that like what they make. Hence the reason why we now have a black man that made streetwear clothing become the artistic director of THE Louis Vuitton. He is there to captain their efforts as the company bets on the future of fashion continuing to be highly involved in urban culture.Virgil was not as blessed to be apart of Louis Vuitton as Louis Vuitton was blessed to attain him.
Ladies and Gentlemen, high fashion designers have listened to “I Thought it was a Drought” and now they are trying to get all us young, colored folk into some Gucci flip flops. But they can’t do it alone. They must hire our creatives and artists to participate in their mission. And you know what? I love it. They want in on our pockets, and if they want in, we need in on their fashion week. I believe this is a cool trade.
This reminds me of The Black Panther. What Marvel/Disney did was give Black people the stage. And what did we do with it? We made a few billion dollars. Louis Vuitton and many other companies are investing in the culture, and I believe that black people today have more leverage than ever in America. Why? Because we have something they want. More money.
No one can judge. We all have our different convictions in life each day. One thing we all must understand is that our problems are like long distance track stars. We can never outrun them. However, when we decide to face our problems head on, we win every time. It isn’t an easy thing to do, however, nothing worth having comes super easy. We at Un-Associated don’t encourage running, we encourage standing tall and facing the storm head on. At the end of the day you can do two things, run until you get caught or fight until you win. Choose wisely.