Virgil Abloh’s Lecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design

hi everyone thank you for coming such a giant crowd here it's pretty sweet so it's my pleasure to introduce virtual habla Graduate School of Design I met virtual many years ago we were working side by side on a pavilion and for an immersive film experience in Kahn and it was a very challenging project on the one hand due to the schedule on the other hand due to its technical complexity and so a couple of nights right before the actual opening one of the many and pretty important stakeholders was losing his patience and he sent a rather aggravated email to Virgil it was saying something along the lines of what is happening here is crazy we're trying to pull off a multi-million dollar super complex project it's the 11th hour dramatic changes are being done changes are being made the soundtrack isn't ready neither the video we're changing architecture this is all insane and I remember villagers respond pain I know teamwork is dream work but that attitude that combination of clarity of vision on the one hand and audacity on the other hand lies at the core of his nature and is certainly the kind of infrastructure that is both constantly identifiable in his work and it's also what enables him to conquer the creative worlds at such an intense speed Virgil is never not Virgil and that constant is what allows him to seamlessly navigate the abrupt terrain between different territories beat fashion music sonography art architecture industrial tees or graphic design performance you will never never see him lose his cool not before the first Fashion Show for his brand offered in Paris not in the midst of overseeing the design for an entire world tour for one of the world's biggest musicians not in front of crowded line of crowded lines at the club's where he DJ's as flat white not in front of all auditoriums across the globe since that night in con Virgil came quite a long way he was nominated in 2015 as one of the top eight finalists for the LVMH prize in Paris he was inducted in the Bureau of 500 the people shaping the global fashion industry list he was also a top nominee in the category of international urban luxury brand at the British Fashion Awards and also a nominee for emerging talent at the CFDA Awards and in 2018 Virgil will be showcasing an artwork focused on art sorry an artwork focused retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago Illinois but Virgil initially started his career off by studying a structural engineering yet his biggest revelation in school was that there was an architectural department in his own words he didn't know up until that point that architecture was a thing something you could legitimately study or make a living with he then proceeded to get a degree in architecture from AMA from IIT and it seems that ever since no stone was left unturned his work covers an immense spectrum of collaborations with people like Jenny Holzer corporations like Nike or IKEA musicians like Travis Scott just to name a few and I'm pretty sure I left quite a few out there one could argue the drive behind Virgil's philosophy comes from that very first experience at the heart of it lies an endless generosity openness and transparency he will not he will not Ville himself with the mystique of success but on the contrary he's in a constant dialogue with the audience around him he's opening up his process always deconstructing his creative methodologies in a public arena hoping that through that someone is being exposed to thoughts and ideas that haven't encountered or dare to consider before our first direct project for off-white was a little store the first store ever in Hong Kong and it started with a stroll through the Chelsea galleries we were looking at art and talking about the vision for how a space could represent everything that virtual stands for the ultimate freedom to be different things all at once and none at the same time the next time we saw each other again was actually at the very opening of that store the entire process and communication every single decision design decision over the span of over six months was done on text message while it might sound terrifying to some it was one of the smoothest process I have encountered and it speaks volumes about Virgil's is to collaborate as well as his skill to express ideas because it requires a huge control of language to be able to communicate with precision in such a limiting medium we didn't in fact make a book from the process since it had been insightful to Virgil may not be practicing architecture in a traditional sense but he's an architect at a different scale one that goes beyond physical the physicality of space around that transcends any boundaries centered around the core of pure creative freedom ladies and gentlemen it's my pleasure to welcome at the Graduate School of Design Virgil oblong [Applause] I'm gonna turn off my whatsapp before it starts annoying you or you can get a sense of how many messages come through on the wave alright that introduction is serious thanks I wanna thanks to Harvard for allowing me to come and sort of share random things on my laptop but that's what this is about to be first and foremost I identify with you guys you know I still feel like I'm a perpetual like kid at school and that's that's first thing that I wanted to deliver because when I was a student all that I wish I knew now is that one person would have told me like one like ounce of advice that wasn't necessarily like the rest of your career will be like an uphill battle but more likely that there's all these sort of shortcuts that you can take and so that's what this literally this whole presentation is about it's about shortcuts that I've learned through studying something super practical like engineering and architecture but then in the outside world there's all these sorts of caveats that you can use to sort of find your career choice that's not delineated by like a single major or a single coursework that you're in and in typical fashion I'm super interested in doing what was inspiring to me the most when I was in school is watching sort of like famous architects present projects that were like buildings built in far-off lands that looked pretty cool like in photographs but instead of course as I want to mentioned my work is sort of like by nature cross-disciplinary and it sort of lives outside the walls of architecture but is the exact same line of thinking that I learned in school so that sort of like the premise and I'm just gonna flip through and just showcase different things that Instagram basically doesn't have the capability to show so like basically every project that I'm working on that I wouldn't Instagram I'm just gonna start sharing and now IKEA Nike stuff get in trouble probably by some corporation in two seconds but let's do it [Applause] sweet so as I sort of outlined you guys understand but let's call it design work you know in an architectural press arena we solve problems in a very structured way that's what we're here to do you know that's that's what this training is about and basically the what I want to sort of like put forth is that that logic works in an analogous way and basically every other aspect of culture you know we focus on living we focus on design providing good design as a humanity as a humanitarian effort but essentially you know understanding that this way of thinking can apply to everything so this is the first time I'm debuting a new wave it's called these red slides these red slides are cheat codes basically if you can answer them you you basically give yourself a cheat code and that's like this sort of 2.0 of these talks that I'm using and it's things that I've had to learn I basically work at a feverish pace in a self-serving way just to find my signature like what's my DNA every architect designer artist that I look up to you know whether they were doing period paintings or buildings in their early career to the end of their career there's basically a through-line so what I would challenge you in your work no matter what is go back you know go back to when you were like that your earliest memories or the way that you thought to organize something the way you thought to organize your closet or what colors were your favorite back in that sort of like early rationale before you sort of learn too much that's when your DNA started and for me that sort of leads me to my next slide which I'm super proud of because the first time I've ever thought about what I'm doing I mean sort of made myself make a list this is straight from the iPhone notes into my sort of standard template but I'll just run through it really fast and then the projects that I show afterwards see if you can see these signifiers but this is by like challenging myself to do a million projects at a time I'm super obsessed with Duchamp super obsessed with ready-made you know that this idea that an artist like over thought the game you know understood the parameters provided something provocative provided something that became a launchpad for other forms of art and as you'll see in a slide later it's it's important to recognize where we're at and the lineage of art movements you know especially now I'm sure even in your class you're trying to like challenge yourself to invent something new try to be so like Alvin got that has zero place basically that's impossible you know these are things that I figured out through working is that we exist off the backs of many other things in iterations before us so once you think about us as a collective you then realize that we're all tracking towards the same direction and that's where I think humanity underlies this word down here I'm sure it says design somewhere so number two for me is obviously this thing that's probably getting a little bit tired but get used to it because I'm gonna keep using it it's talking in quotes it's basically humor I like a couple people laughed and that that's literally the point of that tool is to sort of insert humanity through conversation is it you open up when you laugh and obviously in our era where like vintage is more cool than like so it's like a popular trendy item it's it's just us being ironic you know norm cork a hole that whole like rationale it's real that's you know American Apparel that whole thing is it's just the halo that we're in so my way of doing that and trying to be the most like the most Duchamp version of ironic is speaking in quotes because it allows me to say two things at the same time or be figurative and sort of precise and I can basically design with a keyboard I don't need Photoshop or anything else so there's that then I have my sort of like three percent approach right now I'm only interested in editing something 3% from its original form I'm basically tired it might be too old but I found that unlike things are intriguing to me when they're like slightly edited like these shoes it's like skipping ahead really far into the presentation but there's more Nikes in this box that I'm going to throw around but you know like this is an Air Force one yeah the Jordan way but like essentially I got asked to do another Air Force one this is like a new new one but I was only interested in restraining myself and only editing it three percent because I don't want another shoe I don't want to see something that makes me recognize the shoe that I already have but it's a personal thing moving down basically you know off-white it's a it's like basically a shorthand like pseudonym to remind me that I'm always just comparing two things whether they're super dissimilar they are actually like you know the same it's just my shorthand to say you know between like luxury and street wear that's how I can decide if a dress is done or not or for the t-shirt graphic is finished it's it's an internal like measuring stick and then number five is I love work in progress it's another humanity thing once I realized that it's okay to not be a perfectionist all of a sudden I can do a million things at once and let go to sleep at night and I think it's important I like look at other friends work who are like super precise and perfectionist and I realized I'm just trying to be a perfectionist that I'm not even thinking anymore the sort of design process is just going on to find some sort of like space that ultimately actually looks like something else I've seen and I think it's important to remember that your hand and your brain will tell you when something's finished and then post rationalize make up make up something afterwards or whatever number six which is important to me it's like this goes back to like do we need another shoe do we need another whatever it's basically an output for me has to have a reason to exist you know I think the that's why we have like trash bins and recycling bins it's like it's in our brain that like over-consuming is obviously not okay but I think to us in the sort of design community you know we're the thinkers we're the ones who are going to challenge all these sort of like generational decisions but first every output does it does it need to exist it's okay to say no in that context and then number six is like I mean number seven is as one of the things that is a driving principle to me is like that the tourists in the purest like meet somewhere and that's basically what I love about coming to college towns is because I remember being here it's like think about how much knowledge is in here then think about how much knowledge is in Boston it only you know like you can almost there's a metric it lives in like these blocks but there's real people in the world that benefit and if we're not at the end of the day interchanging with that then ultimately it's self serving as fun as design is so that's you know super important in my work IKEA so surreal basically when they hit me up the first time I swore they wanted me to DJ an event I was like I used to lately I had my my team try to find like the emails like I wanted to do an Ikea project this is like before like hypebeast was like posting IKEA hats and all that I was like can you imagine not even in an ironic way it's like I'm you guys like so I was like the architecture kid that was like making chairs because like class was so boring that I needed to like do something else and I was like oh what if I could bring this sort of mentality that I was doing towards t-shirts to Ikea and so this is my squad all kids that I hired off Instagram that just came up to me and were like hey I know how to use 3d whatever it was like cool you're down like this is us last week so this is not even like old footage this is a yeah this is it's funny this is IKEA hotels crazy place so I'm just gonna go fast cuz I got too many slides but basically the first project was designing like a living environment for a millennial which is super cool like IKEA is you know serves two billion people like I'm still stuck on that metric it's like is what I want I was saying it's like architecture I used to think was just like building buildings but me navigating my way into this institution basically that provides furniture to like real people you know like these are tourists and to me if I can bring an ounce of a new idea or an ounce of like an idea that I had when I was a student that's already a win because it feels a little bit different so as you can tell that rug was a racking my brain of course it like looks super simple but for me it's pulling those like vocab words out of my own language and applying it I love the idea of thinking about like the living room that like you're not supposed to stand or use like certain furniture you know like just it looks expensive so you know look that's that so like off white balance in a moment here there's a secret rug that you can't see at the bottom move past that here's you know I challenged myself to it's like who actually has the luxury to have a rug that big but this it's amazing you know IKEA represents democratic design which is a whole philosophy which actually betters the earth and betters our consumption and they make the best products that they can make and to me what's key is that they're affordable obviously off-white is its own thing it's by design and own project but it's important to me that things are attainable you know that's why this lecture is free but it's about the ideas like you know it's about the ethos and that's why I'm excited to always share that but you know like this I don't know how much it's going to cost but I definitely probably like under 50 bucks maybe and it's a lot of ideas in there definitely gonna get an email about quoting a price that I don't know but it's like yeah you know but what's cool to me is it's a piece of art you know like one thing about me is that in like 50 years it'll be my goal is that in its kind of apparent that I basically just use other factories as my suppliers to make art and you know that's but I use the best and the ones that have an e so it's not the ones that are sort of behind the scenes so yeah just I'm super proud of because it's an idea that's been realized and it's coming up I think soon and then again it's like you know a millennials apartment basically it's like you know thirty pieces that I have to design which is scary it's taken it's probably the longest design project that I've ever sort of taken on myself and the large part of that is because it's so permanent you know it's like a t-shirt is only gonna get like five wears or something like that and then on to the next you know it's fashion that's the whole premise that it moves along faster and there's a romanticism about that which I love it which is sort of my main occupation but once you step outside of that square footage of your closet think about how much you spend per square inch in your space like your closet is like astronomical between the shoes the how many hoodies can you fit you know how many you know that idea but then what about the rest of your place and when do you actually make the conscious decision to buy a coffee table do you buy it out of necessity or do you actually have an affinity for it so me working with IKEA it was like it was super dream project because I could put the attention that I was putting in people's closet into objects that you live with arguably in periods of 10 years you know how often would you own a bed in your lifetime and so that's what I'm challenging myself to make and I'm trying to like is that something new that I made up that sounds really dumb but like what if arc what if Street where was like a Architecture Movement like a movement within art and that thing keeps on popping up because I feel like obviously we're in this like post-modernism sort of state but to me what street we're in quotes means it's just like using whatever means to make something that is impactful make something super niche and that you're emotionally tied to so you know as this IKEA project kept developing there's one like secret element that I can't I came up with a really good idea but my lawyer freaked out so I can't even show it let alone talk about it but through that know which is important every time you hear the first node that's like a good sign because that first know will always drive a really good second idea and then keep that one for yourself so what I did is I came up with this sort of figurative way of thinking about objects I was like what's the best invention in mankind or whatever and then you know just not even really googling just like using your own head it's like you Wikipedia's of course like the wheelwright or fire skip that like the wheel and then you know everyone's got all these like random tumblr images on their laptop or just like googling and I was like so of course like the wheel is like an awesome invention but whoever invented the doorstop was genius I like this idea that I'm like looking at this image that these two like wheel chocks could stop a plane from taking off that could go around the world but except for these annoying like yellow blocks can stop a Boeing 747 from going from here to Tokyo and that's like post rationalizing I think that's indicative of my first idea that I really loved that I couldn't give it I can't make in that sort of realm so inspired by this image is going to be the basically the IKEA project is rooted in here and it's that interruption so these are early sketches the sketch is only like a week oh this is after going to Ikea trying to problem-solve but I'm trying to think of an aesthetic and it's pretty similar in all my work it's like when I started I always think about one detail and I think about repetition to own it because that's one idea it's not about coming up with 60 ideas for one execution so it's funny IKEA itself hasn't seen these the the idea to me was something I learned to you know you have to learn by making so when I was there they showed me you know someone like the oldest techniques in wood we're like how a broom handle goes into a broom head and how it's like threaded and that's that sort of closure so basically I want to take that sort of very old classic wood closure and then this doorstop screws onto the bottom and makes the whole thing level so it doesn't actually use the doorstop as it's like physics sort of mechanism and that to me is streetwear but it's like deeper into it then this chair is supposed to be the most generic chair of your life it's basically if you're a kindergartner what do you think a chair is because as we go back I'm like do we need another chair you know why are we designing chairs so for me it's a it's a you can kind of get a window into thinking of things like the bed will be like have this like iconic sort of feature again super affordable the mirror is gonna be broken basically you know there's like because the ethos for me is like in bed art art is sort of like free you know it's something recognizable it's non anonymous and it sort of makes it intriguing and something worth coveting I'm super inspired by a trip that I took this summer to a friend's home who says like museum quality art like you know open the doors jeff koons like crazy thing that you would see like an investment bank lobby you know cool sterling Ruby and I was like I want to make something at IKEA that's equally as coveted by you know a multi-million dollar home as it is by you know a college student and to me it's like embedding art into something that is universal so this is gonna be a broken mirror I'm interested in like the number one thing I've been doing these surveys to where I go and like visit kids homes and like ask them 20 questions take photos of their place and basically the number one constraint with a home is storage like skip everything else you don't really need another rug chair or whatever it's that the stuff that you already have is like you don't know what to do with it and my idea is making visible stories so at least you can recognize what you own that's why you have it a bag of course I'm doing the bag but yeah like this is sort of sort of equation you know like solving very practical things with adding some value you know like a regular imagine that the regular chair and then this weird chair with the red doorstop to me that's cool to look at it becomes something on top of its function so there's a little IKEA vibe going on you know this slide here another one this is like photo that not really it's not that but important but the it's impactful to me because the whole like Instagram you know everyone's creative Peter Savile my mentor the guy that did all those like Joy Division album covers told me he's like super mentor myung and was like he's like you know why your generation has this like feeling of angst like why you're sort of like super norm a little bit over it but you're excited to be in it he was like in my time which he you know predates me but like 20 30 years was like when we were in London like he in his communication graphic design meets a band called Joy Division they didn't even have anyone to do an album cover and they're just like hey we know how to use these like things at school like and it was basically just that wave form was just a reference that he had and just like gave it to the like photocopied it was like here and it's like a super important album packaging of of their time in our time he was basically like back then there was like three of us like on the same street it was like no one was interested in that and like look at all of us like we can fill a room of we're on the same path so it's like that's where that feeling of like oversaturation is but it shouldn't be urging you know it's like we have a bigger community as the way that I see it but just having a knowledge of what these different are periods and are are can help you give understanding to what you're doing and why you arrived at these ideas that they come like the whole the world evolved in this sort of way that sort of like gave me a bit of context I was not like sort of fighting to be so different it's just sort of owning my own voice and it's like see of different is when everyone sort of like trying to make a mark so yeah the Renaissance that's how I kicked off this wave you know and I always bring this up and talks because no one you can never predict like what first project is gonna like lead to you're you're like dream job or career goals and this was my domino effect I was just really into Caravaggio like to the point where it me as a creative person didn't realize you could invent and that's what you know this painting represents to me it's honestly I just put this up here to have it up at Harvard and someday he's trying to make this long winded vibe but this is like my domino effect like I hadn't ever overthought it do you know what I mean I just made this video screen printed some shirts and gave them to friends and then that's literally why I'm standing here a random sweatshirt and a photo from a book that I liked and basically it's a two-line poem on the back that sort of reads like a jersey and it's like it's super seminal for me and I think it's important if you amongst all your studies amongst like your 9 to 5 all these kids like tuning in on live stream or whatever like if you just force yourself to do the one project that you believe in and then it exists that's gonna be the one that's gonna like lead you on your career not necessarily the practical ones so that's just a showcase of what you know I believe that everyone should do and then so going back to that you also have to have mentors like dead or alive you have to sort of connect with some body of work or someone who formulated a thought and an aesthetic and then build yours upon that what most people won't tell you is that the people that you look up to didn't invent it themselves you know everyone has this sort of like I call it like getting your brain reprogrammed like once you sort of learn a thought process you can actually see yourself in that and add to it so for that it's Corbusier for sure and this kind of dials into that IKEA project when we're sort of trying to solve these like this issue of like dwelling and like what how do we live in spaces versus how the the generation of thinkers before us thought and Corbusier you know obviously thought like a house as a machine a machine to live in so in that context like the living room is only for like living the kitchens only for eating the dress in your bedroom it's like improper to change in your living room you know that's not that that's that's not proper human behavior and so obviously I have a mentor I have a sort of thought process and aesthetic that I love but then once you learn the the ethos of why the aesthetic stetic you dig deeper and then you know how to turn the wheel left or right so it's important you know that's why I often reference things I've not ashamed that's sort of recognising these great moments before us but take anything and add it to the year 2017 it should be different it should feel like we can collectively agree on it and that's what I that's what I focus on in a number of projects so kind of moving on a way this is also like two weeks ago in Milan as the Prada foundation was getting finished happen to be there meeting with Ren on a project that we're working on and it was cool it's like he's discovering this new building the same time we're on me and my friend are there so it was like a mid-weight breakthrough our conversation but i strictly love images like this and i'll show them for forever just because the generation of thinkers and designers in us are on earth at the same time I think it's hyper critical that these loops get made all the time students and the people who basically wrote our textbooks and I'll keep striving to do this and just have conversation so we spoke and we got pretty we're getting in depth honestly this idea what he's working honestly with the countryside and that if half the world's population is living in cities then what's happening in the countryside and how I'm articulating that is what I see in our sort of dynamic you know I was just in Soho like an hour and a half ago it's like there's so many stores are closed you know it's like palace and there's like Mercer the end of Mercer is like popping but all these like vacant reasons like literally half half of downtown New York is just empty and it's like we have Amazon we're not even shopping as much like and me I'm in fashion so how I'm adopting to this whole idea of country size like how is that going to change the sort of like hip relationship between cities and the countryside are weaken our kids now gonna like live in Montauk and then go into the cities on the weekend for entertainment like all you need a first floor retail for us basically eating you know you don't need to shop people aren't even shopping in that pay so the only reason why I bring out this sort of like divergent tangent is because this inspires like how you can design a t-shirt it helps me think of like do we need it again do we need more chairs so I would urge you guys always to think like abstract and big you know countryside to city is its macro but it's giving me perspective on how to tackle like other broad another like super important for me is like Donald Judd in terms of form like be person I'm trying to find even though I know my aesthetic but I'm interested in like the overall form that things are taking and you know just another like I'm just putting these things out there for people who don't know to Google these names and read up on things besides hypebeast essentially but you know this is a great quote and it synergizes with Henrik who's like a design leader on my IKEA team is another mentor of mine and he made a good point that struck me he said we're at an age where design is just assumed he's like you don't notice that a door handle doesn't work until it's broke he's like but you forgot that it had been designed so you know we're in a world where we just expect design and obviously this room has a higher sort of pension for what design is but it's everywhere and how can we as a collective make people make the outside you know Torres versus purist make the outside world understand that design is something to be cherished that's to be closer to quality of life than anything else so you know I think it's just important to be mindful of these things as you're doing your student projects you're working on your like extracurricular what your real passion project is it's drawing these links all these things are just here as like mood board for tools for you guys to make your own list like I had at the beginning and then also like you know this is a point of crossing boundaries just because you're a furniture designer doesn't mean you can't be an artist or culinary chef etc and just studying his form the way he was using different materials and approaches to execute like profound ideas and it was all rooted in his system bingo okay Nike shoes which is cool in the project that I've done so far I haven't even been able to like nerd out like the actual sort of process for that shoe or the how these things came about it started for me like my own personal thing is I'm not a sneaker head like I'm not I just wear the same shoes for a really long time and then I just go on to another but I understand the sort of passion for them and obviously I'm from Chicago so Michael Jordan was our basketball player you know so for me the sort of resurgence of this like eighty-five vintage is where it started for them from and of course like being entrusted with Nike to sort of reappropriation ISOs that I had a thought Nike products the only thing that I could add to the situation is I felt that their products came out of a microwave because they were so good you know it's sort of naive but they're like so perfectly put together so this is the first illustrator that I did myself where I was like you know I want to get the feeling of this but something brand new you know and how does one go about that and if you remember my like seven principles about work in progress or you know Illustrated it's like I took it with great responsibility that they asked me to approach their icons and when you think of Nike you quickly can say air which is what the the you know unlock part the whole ethos is based upon and I did like the naive question curiosity things I grabbed one and I was like in this air Jordan is there an air pocket because it didn't say you know I couldn't see it and this has predates their technology to sort of open the window so I just took an exacto knife and jammed it in the bottom realizing that there was air and I was like I'm gonna write air in my language so that it reinforces this sort of ethos and then obviously this in process is how we ended up with like a like a half made shoe as I want to mention like the iPhone is my tool it's the only thing that I can I can have a conversation with you and work at the same time so of course I do that too much but yeah what's that is my favorite program of choice and like you know this area like the placements all happening on my phone so the early prototype here before we were like getting the whole thing together these are cool anyone from converse here a couple of kids oh yes you guys can't really properly see these do you anyone know Jim Joe is the artist kid that did Drake's he's like way important he didn't many more things just besides that but here's like a special edition he did it's got a swoosh on it this is the original design intention it basically caused like a huge headache when I tried to pull this one off my dream was that I loved like like if you could make impossible product like product that doesn't seem like it would make it through like a legal department it's like a ongoing thing but since it was son like what I thought the most important thing is its Nike Inc going across the brands that they own which is huge so it's Air Jordan that's a different company Nike itself and Chuck Taylor that they own they're giving me 10 of them so out of all 10 my dream was that you would do something that could only live within the 10 of those products so the if anyone wonders that's why there's like this woven label that's here it was another one of my get out of legal sort of issues I had them cut it as if it was the same as on this one there's another jinjo Air Force one one of one art piece is my friend basically who inspires me so I have mentors that are like dead if mentors that are 30 years older than me but I have mentors that are like 10 years younger than me and he's the friend of mine that sort of gave me the sort of nudge to just like write on things and sort of like don't be precious and I think this embodies that to it he like grabbed it and then just gave this back to me and I was like hey this is from Dover Street you just took it off the shelf and like drew it and then put it back and I was like this is why I make stuff you know it's just sort of spark an idea like I'll pass these around so you can guys like steal them and I'll find you for sure kid with the aughh but I think it's important not to be precious that's what this whole thing is like Nike another dream project for me and I was like I have to hit this out of the park and all the architecture kids can sort of catch a vibe a lot of this is like model-making that's where the this is at the same time that I came up with that whole putting sculpture on a bag where that was like just me finding sort of new space and that's when I was like you know a shoe is in a shoe to me like I'm not approaching it as a shoe and I think maybe that's why I found a little bit of like open space is that I was just looking at it like an object you can choose to wear it on your shoe and that's kind of where sneaker culture had gone like these just sit above like kids beds or they sit somewhere you know and I think they sit in boxes still and I wanted to like feel like they were already used when you got them they're still precious but they seem like objects so this is this is where the presto came from kid named Matt Kilgore is like a genius Nate job and Rico's like a squad of kids like in a shop just like you guys probably have here this this is where this is why the sole turned out this color is because this is just a 3d printed sole and this is actually an Air Max 90 that's turned inside out that got jammed back into it and I was like stop no one do anything else it's done tonight key who's like can make a spaceship basically so that was shoot literally that shoe exists because we were just like cutting around and making this so I'm proud of that fun oh yeah that's that little like cut it's supposed to be Nike but that's as far as I could get them to do this is a shoe there's the very first shoe that I made there because I was like I didn't come all this way from my first Nike meeting and not end up with anything to take home I was like where's the printer you know like hey can you and I was like that's what I do is I hey can you do this can you glue this here and so these are one of my favorite shoes just details but the process I think it's you know you guys can see this and get inspiration off of it but you know I know I wanna is a fan of model-making did you ever pull that trick off of getting a studio that only does model making she's working on it I'm gonna take that class yeah the versions of this shoe before it came on I don't know if I can show that yeah that's the shoe I showed you before the Blazer did that on whatsapp the idea that the swoosh was just like lower you know those mistakes in Photoshop when you like put something over and you're like oh that looks cool now on your feet yeah this is this the first version it just like sort of one bullet point that's sort of the process of how I work and the reason why it's a little bit like all over the place I always thought if you worked linearly then you have no room you know do opposites it just feels better but then that space in between gives you sort of a new experience that you can apply and problem-solve that's why I think I work on so many things at one time I couldn't just do one project like day in day out I think it's actually not healthy women show this platform is super cool because you know when I do a fashion show it's probably like the most amount of it it's one of the products that I do it takes like four months of thinking and people only see it for seven minutes and they get no no one ever has a conversation around it it's really like two interviews that I do and then it's off but my last women's show in Paris was based around Princess Diana it was a tribute show just because I felt that she sort of predates our now to me she's you know one of the most photographed women on the planet Earth and it's sort of like in our periphery but you know she's like a muse for modern dressing the fact that she could go literally from something so formal to something so casual had her own sense of style there was no Instagram there's no paparazzi there's no outfits there's no stylists to sort of like go do like the daily errands so I wanted to highlight that it's like I have this brand off-white only to tell stories like I don't have it to do traditional fashion because I don't know that you know I started from that Pyrex like a hoodie with a Caravaggio image but it's like I would think and I promote it's like I was never going to be limited by hoodies and t-shirts no matter how much it made sense you can imagine how much advice that I had got and it's like hey just do that and it's like now I want to draw a line between that and the opposite and that's what the zig zag so now I'm free just sort of like articulate stories and this this to drop that in there for you guys but look at this whole outfit look at the image you know shot on film the the fact is like universal you know that's what I love you can tell I love brands because it already gives you a starting point to sort of tell another story or divert from that so these are the type of images that I was looking at the Red Cross even you know that so like a little known fact that I did as I did these pieces and I collaborated with the Red Cross and I tried to collaborate with Harvard didn't work but you know like donating back to charities that she was giving her time to so that her message could live on you know like there's no that's an architecture thing that's like literally an architect getting a program and deciding where and how big the room should be put me in fashion and I'm like wait I want to continues this one person story cuz it's super like and the idea of hey using graphic t-shirts that say you know red cross off white like they exist now and the proceeds are going back so that's something like super fulfilling to me that doesn't necessarily fit in any sort of like host anywhere and then obviously you know like what she meant she was like Princess Diana like a living Cinderella so my show ended up looking like this you know from that pyrex hoodie champion that that wasn't my brand all the way articulating to this image which to me is just a five-year-old five year graduation of that same exact domino effect project all the handbags this I did get legally cleared was I took sort of like news tabloids or sort of all those sorts of things and it's like this is a version of a graphic t-shirt to me it's butts the handbag with the logo that is a purse and the the thought process was like one of the most advanced personal concepts for fashion to me is like this in 2017 if she was here with us or the idea of people who live with paparazzi images of themselves what's the one thing that like a paparazzi mag might not do is promote a competing organization which was the whole ethos behind these handbags was like you know this is Street where my sort of art movement that I'm trying to claim as something advanced but the idea to me that they make you laugh it's got that tinge of irony in it it's got that feeling like it's juxtaposing something else and it's not limiting me to the sort of street where 1.0 but that I can tell this narrative in a far-off different space so these are just images from the show this is derived from a tiara obviously no one's gonna wear one and those in the modern context I was like let's put it on the feet you know let's let's reimagine what Kyle heels are I did these all with Jimmy Choo gotten a little bit of trouble for doing this this is I could only use Jimmy Choo shoes in the show and I had all these Nike shoes and I was like can I just do two of the cuz this was based on like when you're commuting and you like on the train and obviously women having to wear heels on the way to where you hold the heels in your hand and then wear sneakers but you know the ethos is obviously like alright on anything this is a show super proud of it because it it sort of puts the needle where I want the women's wear for the collection to live you know while the men's wear or any other ideas that I've had since I've started can still live but that's the the ethos of off-white like both are off-white not one of the other yeah lash these you can't really see him but those heels like based on this sort of like glass slipper five they all had plastic yeah that's it that like you know they become objects again and that's you know I showed these images cuz like you guys might be in your Studios thinking that like it's not bad like I still practice architecture not at the same pace or sort of point but your ideas are analogies you know so like your thought process could apply to something else that you might not even be thinking of but hopefully you see something like this it's like oh it's okay to sort of veer off and like to send a random email to a heal company or a random one to an eyeglass or be Park or whatever before you know it you'll be realizing ideas in different spaces and that can inform what you're all all about yeah Street where so yeah again you know one of the later epiphanies that I've been having is that even in conversations like an analogy is something that works for us in a design sense you can use these same tools in different mediums and and they arrive at different results so keep that in mind yeah of course rap music okay so in that same vein of analogies of course I can't limit myself to just like Ikea or Nike but really the idea between behind this video lil uzi asked me to direct a music video and it might be different for you guys but my immediate reaction to anyone asking anything is yes and then I'll think about it and usually I won't say no but nine times out of ten I should probably be like oh I'm busy or whatever registered yes and he had asked me to direct this video and I was like yeah let's do it and I hadn't even had the idea like the full idea yet but I know my seven principles are like this in process saying it's my signature it's the way that like I realize and concepts so we shot this this is the second video I've ever shot the first one was fashion Killa with ASAP Rocky and Rihanna it was like a long time ago proud of that too all these all videos that I've shot take place in the Mercer hotel which is just random but it's a fact but this is like the directors edit that I made which is like the purest form of the idea basically before the record label adds like a bunch of jazz but it's it's to showcase that hey if I master there's an opportunity to exist it's not about building a building sending a graphic for this or oh I only do that it's like keep that door open and then you can make new works of art in different spaces so my way of like capturing this sort of like in process moments that I put myself in the process so there's like two points of view of this same sort of narrative the reason why I showed the Princess Diana sort of project in this one is that I'm touching on a sort of like same social commentary part is like works of art that are distinctly made now influenced with our attention to like something like see photos and press something that you know Princess Diana that's like literally the world that she lived in by being the most photographed or this sort of like energy that happens outside Prince and Mercer when there's like famous people on the street and then they just go through this like mystical door then no one sort of breaks that barrier so this video was about that like you can't I'm not gonna promote that but but basically like when those cruel lines get crossed and like that's what this was it was like me just traveling from the street through to you know like making it all the way up to like this hotel room but telling that like modern narrative story that people want to sort of know more and get all the way up close to that information or synergy just hang out with their favorite rap star or whatever that that line what does it look like once that sort of barrier has been broken so you know this sort of like video takes place you know this like figurative all my friends are not alive wave yeah but films you know like moving imagery is such a good thing on the mood board not all mood board should be like tumbler images yeah that was the end got fined 3k for the blood again so you know like this is mine I urge yeah I always wanted to say this everyone's homework is before next class is to make their own design language literally I'm very upset that it took me I'm 37 so it took me this long to like I think it takes a lot of work and a lot of projects to define that you know yours might only be like two or three at this point or it could be 13 but it's like if you it's like why work you know like what are you working towards you don't have you know you're either in or you're out like you could just just be chill but obviously I take a huge sort of passion about the creative work I do it's not even work it's just living for me but so the things that make it more tangible is that they make sense and that there's a lineage at least that I'm focusing on like a project it irreverent to whatever medium it is so in closing basically put yourself in my shoes it's super weird to have this light on me I'm not that special you guys you know like you have all the resources and this is like a message because I've obviously like I'll be hanging out on the corner talking to kids that are aspirational about doing something design work and obviously when they see me here they're like what like you're at Harvard how come you don't come to like wherever and the whole point it's like it's in my sort of presentation it's not about one of the other it's that we're all in this one big conversation so the whole point of this whole sort of presentation of just stuff that normally doesn't get shown is I'd rather share it to the world so that somebody takes it and spins it off into something that is impactful for them so with that I need that Converse Chuck Taylor back where is it but no yeah that was basically it but I'm really the like this one is you you know the idea that you know I don't know what your internal metric is for what your goals are they should all be very different but you guys are born at a very awesome distinct time like I think that this is the Renaissance don't get sort of trapped into like this everything sucks the world is like coming to an end that's just like an internals mechanism basically to chill when you don't have to put yourself out there you can like wake up every day and come up with excuses but it's exactly the opposite and I think you guys have an awesome education background you guys are you you you're intrigued enough to come here this rambling of a bunch of random project but I know you guys if you're interested in this you guys are interested in tackling something that is and that isn't seen yet so with that I'm done [Applause] we'd have about 10 minutes for questions if you guys have any there's two people with Mike hi-yah hey butcher thanks for the amazing action the product that you show well I don't mind if you throw me a sneaker if I ask that questions um I actually watched the video um it called crash course that you did was 90 yeah and I was the kid that you talked about that I was in in the back of the livestream well so I'm well I might not be the at the edge that you you were the big fan of Michael Jordan but yeah I guess well I was yet edge like error Iverson and Kobe Bryant that was like quite under his stars yeah yeah so my question is to relate it to what are Iverson was asking like let's I'm talking about practice know that he doesn't need to practice yeah I mean sure I'm curious like what's like a routine practice that in your in your daily schedule that you can talk question because I don't know about like analogies who like you know your brain is a muscle have to like work it out or whatever some something weird but something that was super impactful to me as a pyrex vision what used to be this tumbler that I have that I would photograph I just trained my eye to be creative limited to one thing that's what I'm doing now with the quotes but it's like I force do some random activity that forces your eye to sort of see things that it normally wouldn't that's for sure how I'm able to sort of like and I call when I idea and just iterating through like 13 things at one time until I can quickly get to an answer you can't do that if you're sort of casually being creative you know it's like if you have to like sit and you're like okay I'm going to solve this problem you have to sort of like intertwine it with how you see the world like I've loved my friend yacht he's like an art director for off-white showed me his friend he's got this Instagram that he photographs like this one designer brand anytime he sees it so the whole Instagram so what it's done is it's trained his brain while he's like casually doing something else if he sees like Oh a black Chanel bag like just shoots it and then all of a sudden says Colette's like this running sort of creative side and I think if you want to find like new space if you want to sort of like get to another crescendo of design and having your brain figure out how to aesthetically put together something you have to do it often you have that's what I found myself yeah good I guess what's up Virgil my name is peter from mathematic athletics you you mentioned having mentors especially dead ones I'm trying to figure out what's the best way and not like no sorcery stuff like are you communicating like what type of question that you asked or that you're asking you don't mentors in the past Center and along here for for me the number one before getting into like the nuance is why every like I can think it's like why do we love rock and roll graphics like why do we love hoodies you know why do we love designer something and that sort of gets the first nuances to like the ethos like every mentor I have or like someone that's passionate look into their work it seems like they had a cut that like a narrow view and all the work that you love fits into this view and I think it's about having a dialogue with why you're making these decisions there's certain sort of the creative things that you decide before you even get to the get to solving it and that's why it's important to have somebody that you look up to and constantly conversate and the most important thing is having someone edit your work like it at this point there's no wrong answer and design but there's like a right way to edit and and don't think about it in that sort of like harsh way it's basically look at it as a communication art exercise like that's what design essentially is it's like I have these ideas in my head I put them in this inanimate object hopefully you get this long-winded speech and what what I've done is since I've you know I've made it my sort of practice that whole long 90 page sort of presentation was just I just gleamed out of that those seven bullet points so you guys got the cheat code but like this shoe is like so many details through that you can maybe get it and that that's probably why our conversation with all these guys that haven't met but if you see the shoe we're sort of like halfway talking and then I listed off like six mentors you know so in a nutshell that's like literally my whole brain on display okay last question yeah what would you describe you define a moment like your aha moment as a designer yeah it was the fact that there is no aha moment that's the one that tripped me up the most I still to this day I'm reluctant to call myself a designer because I believe that designers didn't look like me which is like a deeper that's like a bar like rapper quavo comes up with lines like oh you know like but that that was my biggest hurdle and that's what I mean to tell that's the only deliver like that's the main message that I'm delivering is that most of these hurdles are self-imposed as designers like they literally don't exist there is no failure failures like as real as like Halloween ghosts do you know and as a designer I was always like I literally was like oh I'm just gonna work in an office I'm gonna work and be an assistant to like a bigger firm and architecture and then on the weekends I was gonna DJ and be into Supreme shirts or something like that and listen go to like Travis Scott shows or something you know I was like that's that's what life is 9:00 to 5:00 and then I say aha moment was like wait I can just put work out and if it's good it works if it's bad no one notices and I can just get better at it and then I could run into a friend or a brand and be like hey I got an idea you know and so that's that's like that's the reality that's what I flew in peace out the cool kids are up [Laughter] but that's the reality that you know I wanted to fly here and there's really I wanna is like our text message is really good but she had the foresight but I wanted to just come and just say those few things and then hopefully you guys run with it thank you yeah hey Virgil yeah so two quick questions watch the statement first I have a shirt for you so first question is is yes or no quick can you sign my shoes after this second question it's a sign so I gotta leave in 10 minutes so I'll do it right now he's gonna you gotta you gotta throw it you have to throw it from there and I have to catch it if I don't catch it I all of these shoes I'll take five I'm gonna be a decent human being I'm gonna be a decent human being just leave mine right here I got a marquetry I got a microwave this is gonna keep going going is a might still on bacon video [Music]

Channel: The Agostinho Zinga Show

Views: 1,124,757

Rating: 4.9197192 out of 5

Keywords: Virgil abloh, hardvard school of design, design language, 7 design principles, streetwear, off white, off-white, design, open source design, industrial design, creative showcase, virgilabloh, kanyewest, yeezy, offwhite, thebrilliance

Id: biFlrzTJets

Length: 70min 30sec (4230 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/easymac96]

For all the shit Virgil gets on this sub, he's a very articulate dude and knows exactly what he's doing as a business man

[u/[deleted]]

I like his lectures, nice to listen to while just having a wank/playing video games, although the audience and their questions are usually stupid.

[u/Dethronex]

cool guy edit: as im watching the video he makes a lot of good points

[u/abrasvmente]

"HARVARD"

[u/TriFireHD]

I wish I could've said that I threw a shoe at Virgil 😣😣

[u/jordo2k]

Yah okay but when is the lil pump lecture gonna be???