Member Brief: Virgil, The Polymath

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This essay was originally written on an October day while seated on a bench in New York’s Madison Square Park. When I would travel to the city, I would visit museums with people who inspired me. But on that particular day, time was short. I had two hours to spare and I wanted to make them count, so I chose to make my own museum of sorts. I put my AirPods in, hit play on what would turn out to be one of Virgil Abloh’s final DJ sets.

For the first hour and 14 minutes, I researched his years between 15 and 41. And then the tone of the DJ set’s flavor of music shifted for a few minutes and inspired me to write what you’ll read below.

To me, the moment represented the feeling in a museum when you feel spoken to by art. You relate to the context of what you see t in front of you and you look over to the person to your right and you explain it with a passion. As I switched from research to writing, I was “talking” to the person (you) on my right through written word.

These are my thoughts on one of the great polymaths of our time. The final three paragraphs were added upon his passing. This is for Virgil Abloh.

“An Idea I Had”

We are so quick to put women and men in a box that we fail to see the beauty when they do not fit in either one. For me, this is the fascination with polymathic types and there are few who fit the mold more than you. You are a mix between left brained and right. How did you strike a balance between the two?

I have so many questions.

How did the son of a Ghanaian seamstress and painter fit in at Boylan Catholic High School? Did you make yourself small for those years or did your prized grandiosity breakthrough the monotony of high school sameness? Did you say that you were from Chicago even though you were a suburban kid? What were your influences while you were there? Did you enjoy the school’s philosophy curriculum and its theology courses?

As an engineer at the University of Wisconsin, what was more difficult for you: Multivariate Calculus? Linear Algebra? Probability and Statistics? Differential Equations? Was earning your Civil Engineering degree your happiest moment at the time?

When you were at Illinois Institute of Technology studying for your Master of Architecture, which was a more important moment for you? Was it observing the construction of the building designed by Rem Koolhaas or the classes themselves? What, in you, made you look at the civil engineering in front of you and choose fashion for your primary form of expression? Did you ever get to speak to Koolhaas about his brand philosophy of selling a brand instead of marketing clothes? Did you visit his Beverly Hills Prada store?

I found your first moment of culmination. This is where your inspiration meets your influence meets your education meets your will.The blog that you called home, The Brilliance, highlighted the fact that nearly 13 years ago to the day, your first T-shirt entitled “Medallions en bleu” sold out in a week at Colette. Did you know that you could build a fashion empire before this moment or is this what it took to confirm it within yourself?

It was a smart first approach: a venerated name in fashion’s first city, a blank Champion, a beautiful design, and the extra care to redesign the size tag. Hypebeast wrote about it in 2008; back then, they needed to use your whole name.

Nearly one year later, Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift on stage at the 2009 MTV Music awards. What did you say to the television when you saw the man who you met at a Chicago print shop make himself a villain before millions? Did you discuss it with West en route to Fendi in 2009? So many moments happened for you in this year. Fendi signed you to an internship alongside Kanye West. It was the year that this famed image was snapped by Tommy Ton during the Paris Fashion Week. You became the Creative Director of DONDA. At the time, few understood what you’d done, who you were, or what you would become.

Virgil Abloh before he was Virgil, pictured alongside Kanye West in Paris (2009)

LVMH recognized you for the first time, that year, however. And you opened RSVP Gallery with Don C in Chicago. I attempted to run there from my hotel once, earlier this year. The Milwaukee street stretch to your storefront was a hard bargain and I ended up turning around at mile five. That’s about as close as I got to being in your presence, indirectly of course.

Did you become fast friends with Jay-Z when you designed the Watch The Throne album cover? Was the Ralph Lauren deadstock for your Pyrex Vision project your best investment? Is this the moment when you realized you were a true artist? For those who do not know, you shut down a company that was selling $40 tees for $550; you called it “an artistic experiment.”

Your next project is how most of us began to know you. You said this about Off-White.

In a large part streetwear is seen as cheap. What my goal has been is to add an intellectual layer to it and make it credible.

You accomplished this right as the tide began to shift in 2012, especially for women and men of color who wanted their contributions appropriately accounted for. Today, streetwear is widely applauded but back then, it was still a part of the streets.

The Gray Area Between Black and White

That’s the origin of the name Off-White, a brand that propelled you towards collaborations with Nike, Ikea, and a consumer sentiment that outranked Gucci’s. Nearly every American has seen your work by now, even if they didn’t know that it was you.

It would be just nine years since the moment LVMH CEO Michael Burke recognized your brilliance when on March 25, 2018 you stole the dream of your former mentor Kanye West. What was it like becoming the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear division? Was he upset with you? Did your friendship suffer?

I remember your first Louis Vuitton fashion show. I remember the Serena Williams outfits designed by you for that year’s US Open. And I remember how you helped Rimowa’s rise as the premiere luggage brand continue unabated.

Posthumous

I am sorry, Virgil. Cancer has deeply affected me and my family and I have a special hatred for it. I am not sorry for you, I am sorry for it. In the two years that you fought the disease with vigor and valor, you launched a monthly internet show devoted to your love of DJing. You launched your first solo museum exhibit at the MCA in Chicago. I had the book with me in Madison Square Park that day. Had I known you were in excruciating pain while producing for family, friends, and fans, I would have never set the book on the dusty park ground. I remember during the summer of 2020 when you were facing extreme scrutiny for a $50 donation that you made to that Miami-based art collective to cover George Floyd protestors’ legal costs. The internet skewered you while you were probably writhing in pain, silently and valiantly. You continued to contribute, you never made excuses for what was blown out of proportion, and God only knows what donations you contributed behind the scenes.

Today, Sotheby’s launched its official entry into the world of streetwear. Nine years ago, the affluent in your midwestern city would have laughed at the idea of your turning the tide of culture to include more faces, more types, more colors, and more styles.

You were an engineer-turned-architect who excelled in music and culture. You expressed your art and love of culture through fashion. The New York Times wrote:

In recent years, it could often appear as if there were several Virgil Ablohs, all working at the same time. [1]

And the New Yorker’s tribute to you began:

For the polymath, there is always a cardinal subject, a chief preoccupation around which all the other interests spin. For the fashion designer Virgil Abloh, the polymath of his cohort, who died on Sunday of a rare cardiac cancer, offensively too young, the center was architecture. [2]

You were a polymath but you likely never referred to yourself as such. We are so quick to put women and men in a box that we fail to see the beauty when they do not fit in one. Society wants us to fall within one of two categories, black or white. You created your own in off-white, the grayscale between the two colors. The masters are those who can travel between the two sides of the brain. What your life showed us is to keep yourself as close to the middle, using both sides at once.

I am sorry for your family’s pain but I am comforted knowing that you passed away knowing that you finished work that will make your life timeless. Your pace was exceptional and so was your life.

Por Web Smith | Redacción: Hilary Milnes | Arte: Alex Remy y Christina Williams

 

Memo: H.E.N.R.Y. y Tiffany Blue

Hace casi once años, el músico, que entonces tenía 41 años, rapeó: "Mi tono favorito es el azul Jay Z". Muchas cosas pueden cambiar en una década: los gustos, la propiedad de Tiffany & Co, o incluso el conocimiento público de un raro cuadro del afamado artista Basquiat. En el centro del controvertido planteamiento de LVMH para realinear la marca con el núcleo de su influencia (el hip hop) está el papel del azul huevo de petirrojo de Tiffany y de un raro cuadro. Rachel Tashjian escribió sobre la mezquina controversia para la revista GQ:

Contratando a la pareja más famosa del mundo y consiguiendo un cuadro del pintor contemporáneo más famoso, o al menos más cool, Arnault pretende que el azul de Tiffany sea tan codiciado como el naranja de Hermès, un símbolo mundial de exclusividad y deseo (y la rara joya de la corona francesa que no pertenece a LVMH). [1]

Beyoncé Knowles Carter y su marido, Shawn "Jay Z" Carter, no son ajenos a Jean-Michel Basquiat. De hecho, poseen uno de sus célebres cuadros. Una preciada posesión cuando el difunto artista vagaba por las calles de Nueva York, hoy sus obras desempeñan un papel más importante que la vida en la idea del arte negro, el éxito y la comercialización. Antes de su prematuro fallecimiento, el artista se enfadaba a menudo por la falta de reconocimiento en su propia ciudad, que hoy lo reclama como uno de sus preciados ingenieros de la cultura. Pero hay una cultura concreta que tiene su influencia aún más cerca. Existe una línea directa entre Basquiat, la cultura hip-hop y la influencia de la familia Carter. Es este pedigrí, uno de los más influyentes en todo el consumismo, el que la familia Arnault aprovechó para su reinvención de la marca Tiffany. Se puede discutir su idoneidad, pero no su eficacia.

Un Basquiat nunca antes visto inundó los feeds de Twitter y, al parecer, las discusiones de LinkedIn el lunes por la mañana. El motivo: una nueva campaña de Tiffany protagonizada por Jay-Z y Beyoncé, que luce Balmain y la piedra Tiffany, posando junto al cuadro. El fondo del Basquiat es el azul huevo de petirrojo de Tiffany.

La campaña suscitó un debate sobre si el fallecido artista habría apoyado o no que su obra se utilizara en un anuncio de lujo y, en general, generó expectación en torno a la emblemática marca, que fue comprada por LVMH el año pasado y se ha sometido a un cambio de imagen para atraer a un público más joven. Para ello, la empresa se ha apoyado en el hip-hop, contratando a embajadores como ASAP Rocky y recurriendo ya a Nas para narrar anuncios. La campaña de Bey y Jay durará un año y marcará una nueva e importante campaña para la marca.

Alexandre Arnault, hijo del jefe de LVMH, Bernard Arnault, recibió las llaves de Tiffany en enero, convirtiéndose en vicepresidente ejecutivo de la empresa. A sus 29 años, su influencia es decisiva para tender un puente entre la Tiffany de la generación de Audrey Hepburn y el próximo consumidor de lujo. Se plantean algunas preguntas. Beyoncé y Jay-Z están entre los músicos más importantes del mundo; no son estrellas de TikTok diseñadas por la Generación Z, pero parecen poseer las claves de la aspiración. Y la revelación de un Basquiat hasta ahora desconocido habla de dinero antiguo, no de una nueva definición del lujo. Pero Gen Z no es necesariamente el objetivo, es el HENRY. Como 2PM escribió en 2019, los HENRY (personas con altos ingresos que aún no son ricas) son un grupo demográfico importante al que las marcas deben apelar:

Se benefician de la asociación al mantener relaciones con valiosos consumidores a largo plazo que probablemente crecerán en el mercado. Esto mejora directa e indirectamente el valor de vida de la marca.

Como demuestra la campaña de Tiffany, que toma algunas decisiones estratégicas para cambiar el enfoque de la marca de joyería sin salirse demasiado de su zona de confort, el objetivo no es sólo llegar a los jóvenes. El objetivo no es sólo llegar a los jóvenes, sino también a los "up and comers" que tienen los medios para convertirse en clientes, si no ahora, muy pronto. Arnault quiere que Tiffany blue sea la envidia de uno de los segmentos de consumidores más críticos del comercio minorista. Pero antes, LVMH quiere que sepamos que es el azul favorito de Jay Z. La familia Carter tiene una influencia de otro mundo en el consumismo de los que tienen y los que quieren tener. Y esto es lo que espera aprovechar la nueva dirección de Tiffany & Co.

Por Web Smith | Editor: Hilary Milnes | Arte de Christina Williams

Informe para los Miembros nº 17: El Informe Conde Nast

Marca_de_agua_por_marca_de_cola copia

Conde Nast acaba de publicar un resumen de un informe sobre el poder de los grupos mediáticos para influir en las compras. El estudio se realizó en colaboración con una organización llamada Tapestry. En él, los hallazgos identificaron la importancia del reconocimiento de marca y la confianza en las decisiones de compra del embudo superior. Realizado a lo largo de la primavera de 2018 mediante la técnica CDJ de Tapestry, Conde Nast midió las respuestas de 4.500 consumidores estadounidenses de entre 18 y 64 años.

Este informe está destinado exclusivamente a Miembros ejecutivos, para facilitarle la afiliación, puede hacer clic a continuación y acceder a cientos de informes, a nuestra lista DTC Power List y a otras herramientas que le ayudarán a tomar decisiones de alto nivel.

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