Virgil Abloh: How Kanye's Apprentice Stole His Dream Job

as a designer or artist it's important the time that your hand you know so the time dictates what makes the work sort of relevant and unfortunate to be on earth in Renaissance ability to create [Music] birds oh he's now going to be Lily the country's first african-american erect there don't ever he's been tapped to serve as the next artistic director of menswear at Louboutin Virgil a blow will now be designing clothing for the luxury brain now he's moving to the we Vuitton is huge Virgil habló is one of the most recognizable names in fashion today his story is legend by now he worked with Kanye started off white and ascended to Louie Vuitton Kanye West has been a long-time supporter of Louis Vuitton having done sneaker collaborations with them and expressing his desire to be their artistic director someday but Virgil Kanye's understated creative right-hand man for nearly a decade pulled a Star Wars move of sorts when he beat out his mentor for the coveted position Kanye still feels conflicted about it I felt bad I felt like it was supposed to be me I was the Louis Vuitton da people still call me the Louis Vuitton Don when I'm walking down the street so how did Virgil get here how did he create a personal brand so valuable that the world's number one luxury house was willing to bet their future on his direction how did Virgil steal Kanye's dream job [Music] [Music] Virgil was born outside of Chicago in Rockford Illinois he and his sister were raised by immigrant parents from Ghana as a kid he was obsessed with fashion art and design his earliest look at culture came from skateboarding and hip hop he said quote I was just like an average sort of suburban kid born in 1980 into watching Michael Jordan or listening to Guns N'Roses or NWA skateboarding in that whole aesthetic was my fashion upbringing when Virgil discovered graffiti in sixth grade it sparked his passion for drawing he and his friends would draw Nike shoes and sum them to the company even though they never accepted any designs when Virgil got to college he studied engineering at wisconsin-madison to please his father my dad said like I always wanted a son as an engineer and I'm the opposite of like a Red Bull type so I was like that's the least I can do for like giving for you making this drive from a third world country yeah it's like yeah you're gonna get a son as an engineer after his undergrad studies he went back to Chicago and got a master's degree in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology at IIT Virgil had a professor that took him under his wing he told him to learn the computer programs for more than just architecture so Virgil learned 3d programs and the Adobe suite and it was during that class that he started making t-shirts habló began taking shopping trips to New York City and eventually started blogging about a wave of brands selling skate clothing without the skateboarding this was when streetwear started to make its way into the mainstream originally our state you know consumer I was the person that was just buying things that were interesting I came from an era with some Street where in New York in Los Angeles and that they were sort of like great vibrance but it was new and sort of an independent market in the book this is not a t-shirt designer Bobby hundred says quote defining street wear is very difficult a lot of people see t-shirts and ball caps and think it's hip hop or skater style but street wear is simply the merchandise associated with an attitude Virgil got his first shirts made at a screen printing store in Chicago called custom kings he gave the shop his art files in such perfect format that they literally just hit print since he formed out of the files perfectly the store offered him a job and a couple weeks later Donn see a manager for an up-and-coming Chicago rapper named Kanye West went into the store looking for designers he introduced Virgil to kanye shortly after and the two vibed right away because they loved talking about ideas so in 2007 West hired habló to help him realize his growing ambitions beyond music Kanye and myself have been friends for 14 years now we've always been driven by fashion we've always been the kids in the store like wanting to know more because there's something the felt like something that was at play something that we didn't know but we appreciate it no that was ironically at the Louie Vuitton store Michigan Avenue for almost a decade Virgil's Kanye's personal creative director and was in charge of overseeing projects like stage shows and concert merchandise he was a code designer of Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak cover a news in charge of art direction for my Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Watch the Throne and the easiest tour he's like the strategist I'm the emote ur I'm like Tesla I'm thinking of all the ideas like Nikola Tesla that I got the car and I'm thinking of all these ideas and Virgil is able to take all of those ideas and then architect them because he is an architect Kanye's history in the fashion industry is as long and involved as this career and you and since he burst onto the scene in 2004 his impact on men's fashion may be unmatched the college dropout shattered the mold of gangsta rap in favor of a more introspective self-aware style rap it shifted the landscape of hip-hop sonically and also changed the world's perception on what a rapper should look like yayyyyy traded in baggy jeans and triple XL tees for bright colored rugby shirts pink polos and Louis Vuitton backpacks one of Canada's first notable sneaker collaborations happened in 2009 with Louis Vuitton this project led him and his team to Paris oh yeah he's like wait Paris Fashion Week he said this is where the new collections are they doing I'm gonna go you know like I'm gonna use this door you invited all of us to go with him because he knew that that's what we were into I think this is where the designers at these are where the ideas are coming from while in Paris Connie's team wound up in a squad photo outside of a show that was parodied relentlessly first online and then on South Park I do you mean my South Park photo yeah remember how funny that was do you think there would be a G Vaughn Chi in the hood if it wasn't for that South Park photo yes but no one thinks about that no one thinks about the names I got called for like wearing tight jeans for habló the ridicule was well worth the opportunity he and Kanye could tell the party they were crashing was missing something and they could provide it he said quote we were a generation that was interested in fashion and we weren't supposed to be there we saw this as our chance to participate and make current culture in a lot of ways it felt like we were bringing more excitement than the industry was as Kanye's aspirations grew hablo became a collaborator in Donda a company named after Kanye's mother for years what Donna actually was remain mysterious but Virgil the laptop holding man seen with Kanye everywhere was tasked with turning aspiration into actual projects ultimately the Donda project was a mission to raise the taste level of the world working with Kanye he at one time said something that's super profound and had an impact on me ever since then he was like he's like yo you realize that like if we work hard we could actually like raise the taste level of a whole generation in society in June 2012 Kanye released the Air Yeezy 2 which would be the last silhouette he ever designed for Nike the shoes sold out immediately and today resell for over seventy five hundred dollars however Nike never offered him a formal deal in December 2012 Vergil started his first clothing label Pyrex vision West was seen wearing the brand multiple times over the next few months and it's safe to say Kanye's influence played a large role in legitimizing habló as his own entity although Pyrex was met with underground acclaim Vergil thought of it as more than our project than fashion brand so he stopped it immediately to make way for his next idea following the release of Kanye West's sixth studio album yeezus yeah he did a string of epic interviews where he outlined his frustration with the fashion industry I am so frustrated like I am so I've got so much I want to give I've got ideas on color palettes I've got ideas on silhouettes and I've got a million people telling me why I can't do it you know that I'm not a real designer I'm not this I'm not a real rapper either I'm not a real musician either like I don't know how to play the piano like I'm an artist I went to art college he said that without a large corporations backing the most you be able to design would be t-shirts that's the most we can make t-shirts we could have our best perspective on t-shirts but if it's anything else you're Truman Show Boat is heating the wall I make music I can do it but I shouldn't be limited to only one place of creativity Kim Jones was one significant fashion figure that took Kanye and Virgil seriously from the jump he's the former men's artistic director of Louis Vuitton and current creative director of the oromë he became a mentor to Virgil Dean I slept on his couch that's left I've like forced him to teach me like front room and made available and spend a summer sitting there and then gagging all the old Japanese nights out magazines out for you and Kanye gagging food and with post-it notes yeah it's like we but we found somebody in the industry before they used the vote like the term street where luxury he was practicing that going through like bringing to bringing forth like street culture ideas through the high-fashion system that notion of merging worlds was inspiring to Virgil and laid the foundation for his next brand off-white the design aesthetic is based around diagonal lines and white arrows industrial packaging with a signature zip tie when Virgil started off white he couldn't get a fashion writer to write about his project but with Instagram he said he took an open source tool and made it his magazine they made it possible for him to have a fashion brand without using the traditional system and having been Kanye's creative director for years Virgil had friends in very high places who were eager to wear his stuff soon people like jay-z Beyonce kendall Jenner and Drake among others were being photographed wearing his brand off white was becoming ubiquitous with people who are ubiquitous around this time Connie signed a fashion deal with Adidas which was the first big platform that was willing to offer him royalties and a chance to design a collection the owe me without a daughter might have taken the Nike deal because I just loved Nike so much blah blah blah but the new me with a daughter takes the adidas deal because I have royalties and I have to provide for my family in 2015 J released the Yeezy 750 boost and later that year dropped the wild leap popular low taki easy boosts with these drops Connie helped change the perception of Adidas soles he turned them into a poppin brand whereas before Nike was really the only game in town in 2017 off-white partnered with Nike to redesign 10 of the company's best-selling and classic styles Virgil said he was very hesitant and approaching this collaboration and I called it career to see the potential career suicide like sneakers are the most sacred thing everyone has a valid opinion so it's a trust that I'm grateful for the 10 projects included sneakers from Nike as well as Nike own brands converse and Jordan habló said quote its larger than designed cultured these 10 shoes have broken barriers and performance and style to me they're on the same level as the sculpture of David or the Mona Lisa the collaboration was teased on Instagram months ahead of the release leaving sneaker has heavily anticipated the deconstructed kicks after they were co-signed on social media by stars like ASAP rocky Kim Jones and Naomi Campbell when they did drop the sneaker sold out immediately and most of them resell for over $1000 today Kanye was quick to point out that the Nike sneakers got hot again because they offer deals to his former team and the funny thing is look at Naik now [Music] literally all the people that ever work with me are like the hottest people at Nike now like they gave them the deals because we left and rip the heads off but ultimately he said he understood why Virgil took the Nike deal they got families bro you know these corporations they provide an opportunity these are my friends they have families I'm not gonna provide them the same opportunity I'm not gonna stand in a way either if you're really you know close to me it's just gonna be my friend so people you know want to build their own brand actually need to be as far away from me as possible in a very short amount of time both easy and off-white had become two of the hottest friends in the world but both guys understood that with being a new brand they had a lot of limitations compared to established luxury brands with thousands of stores and factories and both of them viewed Louis Vuitton as the pinnacle it's among the most prestigious fashion houses and it's the world's biggest luxury brand with a valuation at over 28 billion dollars at the end of 2017 Kanye was very close to securing a deal with Louis Vuitton Kanye said he met with Bernard Arnault who was chairman and CEO of LVMH a conglomerate that owns a Louis Vuitton yayyyyy said quote we had a deal on the table that we shook on I did some performances at their Museum and then three months later the deal got dropped at the board just a few months later they tapped Virgil hablo to be creative director of menswear Pablo was an unorthodox choice he's a black American and has no high fashion pedigree in an industry with a storied reputation for being exclusive and largely European he became the first black designer to be given this position in the history of LVMH for Virgil this was something you could have never dreamt of I did not ever think that I could be a designer with a capital D because no one looked like me just plain and simple I couldn't see I was like I'll never get the capitalization I might be a designer but I might do it and do another career because I was like I don't see people that look like me I have to get struck by a certain type of lightning to get that sort of Epiphany to be someone to tap me with a wand and say you're a designer Connie revealed that Virgil's appointment was tough for him on several fronts one he had his own deal that fell through and second Virgil was his guy and they took his top designer from it Connie always thought he'd be the one getting the job offer I felt bad I felt like it was supposed to be me I was the Louis Vuitton Tom people still called the Louis Vuitton Don when I'm walking down the street Kanye said ultimately Bernard could have picked and when he wanted to be the head of Louis Vuitton so when Virgil asked you to attend his first show in Paris in June 2018 he knew he had to go Kanye said quote if I didn't go who was I then no one knew that the deal had been pulled no one knew that this was the beginning of me going to the hospital no one knew how this game is at the end of the show Virgil got a standing ovation among them was a blos mentor Kanye West who hugged the emotional designer as he bowed and admitted to the audience that he was very proud what I loved about when I hugged Virgil is he he showed me that actually we're all playing on the same court here and that touchdown in for us all because there was a time when we all were crazy there's a time when it was fish sticks in South Park now everybody want to pull up at a fashion show welcome he was the guy when it was a completely unpopular that said I am NOT to be typecast into a box like he willed it for us you know like I go back Keith he was like we're going too fast like this place that we can't get in that dream is his just as much as his mine in my dream it was him down the runway the one thing that I that has to be stressed about that show is that it actually wasn't me on the runway you know it was the community that show was us you know and that link wouldn't have happened unless you know I acknowledge that Kanye stood from a mountaintop long ago and yelled saying the future of fashion will be like hablas appointment represents a new wave in fashion and demonstrates that the industry is now taking a street way seriously as is often the case with a blos work the designers moved to Louisville Thanh has divided opinions to some it's the dawn of a new era in fashion but to others it's a sad victory for hype over originality with critics citing habló as not a design genius but rather a smart communicator that got the system to think he is so why did virgil get the appointment over kanye ultimately i think it came down to perception in many ways kanye west is divisive and too much of a liability he's never shied away from offering his takes on race and politics pablo on the other hand has acknowledged race more subtly he's intelligent educated well-spoken and he speaks to a young diverse demographic thanks to his wild success at off-white so all in all he was the natural safer choice for louis vuitton but i guess the point of the story here is that there's never one way to success you look at Kanye today and his apparel brand easy is a multi-billion dollar empire Forbes estimates West's earned over a hundred fifty million dollars last year Kanye said in some ways he's blessed he didn't get the offer and if a fashion house offered him a job today he'd likely turn it down I am in too good of a position to take a job where I have to be away for my wife and my son and my daughters that just don't make no sense for what family is your most important currency Virgil is Phillip the helm of Louis Vuitton and off-white and seems this happy and inspired as ever he said I want to share what I've been able to discover with more kids who come from where I come from and look how I look I want to show them that the world is full of tremendous opportunities I just want to make sure that the door is open for a room of these kids to feel like they can design fashion be on a runway both Virgil and Kanye are inspirations they fought to be where they are today and they are Outsiders no longer well that is a your wrap thank you for watching if you like my stuff you can follow me on instagram at jake demon i post songs on their funny comments and random so just say what's up if you happen to be somebody that enjoys music you should check out my Spotify I've curated several playlists on there that include my favorite songs by each of the musicians I've made videos on from tame impala to Mac Miller to Frank Ocean I've also curated several new playlists including pregame bangers a house pack and a new playlist with easy relaxing vibes I also have a playlist with my favorite music of the moment and I am updating these playlists literally every day so I hope you find some new music you like on here finally I want to say that I have a website with some goodies I was inspired a few months back to make a dad hat with a planet on it because I have wanted a dad hat with a planet on it and I thought they looked sweet but some of you guys also have thought that too and I've strangely sold a decent chunk amount so today I have hats shirts and some hand tie-dyed shirts for sale by the way those tie-dye shirts took me way longer to make than you'd ever imagine I also have some hand design artist stickers that are perfect for your laptop or notebooks obviously only buy something if you actually dig it but know that this is a helpful way to support me since almost all of these videos get copyrighted either way I appreciate all the support I have so many ideas for videos and I am excited to share them in the coming months much love [Music]

Channel: Soulr

Views: 2,136,245

Rating: 4.9255638 out of 5

Keywords: #KanyeWest, #VirgilAbloh, #KanyeWestVirgilAbloh, #VirgilAblohDocumentary, #KanyeWestDocumentary, #JakeZeeman, #KanyeWestJakeZeeman, #KanyeWestFashion, #VirgilAblohHowKanyesApprenticeStoleHisDreamJob, #Kanye, #KanyeVirgil, #KanyeLouisVuitton, #VirgilAblohLouisVuitton, #LouisVuitton, #VirgilLouisVuitton, #Soulr

Id: 3hkl1Zvv80Q

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/mcqueenofthehill]

I don't agree with the word choice of "stole" in the title. Other than that I thought it was an interesting video.

[u/APetro21]

Virgil didn’t steal it. Kanye lost it.

[u/SixPackAndNothinToDo]

Pretty poor characterisation.

The two of them are friends and have a very supportive relationship.

There's even footage of them embracing after Virgils first LV show and Kanye is very emotional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isQCbZaC9Ig