PARIS: Virgil Abloh paid tribute to his friend and longtime collaborator Kanye West as the US designer took star billing as Paris men’s fashion week began Tuesday.
Relations between the pair have been tested since Abloh was named head of menswear at Louis Vuitton in March, with the rapper saying it was “hurtful” to lose his muse and erstwhile artistic director.
West has made no secret of his own ambitions to lead a major luxury brand as a designer, and revealed last month that he had also once been in talks with Louis Vuitton’s owner, French fashion magnate Bernard Arnault.
Abloh — the son of Ghanaian immigrants — will show his own Off-White label in Paris Wednesday before making his debut bow with the world’s biggest luxury brand on Thursday.
As he put the finishing touches to his collections he posted a photo of Kanye West to his 2.3 million Instagram followers with legend, “The architect of it all.”
West’s wife Kim Kardashian responded with emojis of a heart and two fires to signal her approval. The rapper — who has his own Yeezy line for Adidas — remained silent.
But he told US radio star Charlamagne tha God in a wide-ranging interview last month that there were no hard feelings.
“These things are hurtful when you are working with a talent like... Virgil and somebody comes through and says ‘Bam! I am going to take Virgil.’
“There is some validation in that someone that I came up with is now the head (of menswear) of Louis Vuitton,” West added.
Abloh, 38, is only the second black man to rise to the top of a big Paris fashion house, with French designer Olivier Rousteing responsible for both Balmain’s men and women’s lines.
As well as his nod to his former employer, Abloh dropped hints on social media that he was about to give the aristocratic Vuitton label a strong dose of black empowerment and streetwear style.
Vuitton’s previous designer, Briton Kim Jones — who makes his own debut for Dior Homme on Saturday — often referenced British colonial and safari chic in his clothes.
Abloh grew up in Illinois where his seamstress mother taught him her trade as he studied engineering and later architecture. He has made it clear his clothes will be much more street.
He posted films on Instagram of cotton plants and ceramic neck chains, in what could be seen as references to slavery, as well as a Louis Vuitton record box inspired by hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash, “where you can put your coat in while DJing, shielding it from smoky clubs and spilled drinks.”
Abloh had worked hand in glove with West for more than 15 years. They designed clothes together on Photoshop and were $500-a-month interns under Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi in Rome in 2009 even though the rapper already had a string of Grammy awards under his belt.
West said that he only found out about Abloh taking over at Vuitton as the appointment was announced in March. “He (Abloh) made the call two minutes before it hit the Internet... He had told me he was looking at Versace too... but he knew he was going to Louis Vuitton,” he added.
West admitted days later in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter that the news had weighed on him. “It’s not bad or good,” he said.
Abloh has built up a celebrity following at Off-White with high-profile collaborations with Nike, Jimmy Choo and Moncler. Such has been the buzz that fashionistas jostled each other to get into his show in Paris last March.
Not everyone, however, is sold on streetwear’s inexorable rise. New York Times critic Guy Trebay said a “lot of what turns up on the runways lately looks less designed than crowdsourced.”
The young German and Swedish brands CMMN SWDN and Gmbh kicked fashion week off on Tuesday evening after a dance show by choreographer Mathilde Monnier inspired by shoemaker J.M. Weston.
French label Pigalle also tried to rethink the catwalk by presenting its new collection during an hour-long music and dance show at one of the French capital’s most prestigious concert halls.
No hard feelings: Paris fashion star Abloh reaches out to Kanye West
No hard feelings: Paris fashion star Abloh reaches out to Kanye West
- Abloh will show his own Off-White label in Paris Wednesday before making his debut bow with the world’s biggest luxury brand on Thursday
- Abloh grew up in Illinois where his seamstress mother taught him her trade as he studied engineering and later architecture. He has made it clear his clothes will be much more street
Decoding villains at an Emirates LitFest panel in Dubai
DUBAI: At this year’s Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, a panel on Saturday titled “The Monster Next Door,” moderated by Shane McGinley, posed a question for the ages: Are villains born or made?
Novelists Annabel Kantaria, Louise Candlish and Ruth Ware, joined by a packed audience, dissected the craft of creating morally ambiguous characters alongside the social science that informs them. “A pure villain,” said Ware, “is chilling to construct … The remorselessness unsettles you — How do you build someone who cannot imagine another’s pain?”
Candlish described character-building as a gradual process of “layering over several edits” until a figure feels human. “You have to build the flesh on the bone or they will remain caricatures,” she added.
The debate moved quickly to the nature-versus-nurture debate. “Do you believe that people are born evil?” asked McGinley, prompting both laughter and loud sighs.
Candlish confessed a failed attempt to write a Tom Ripley–style antihero: “I spent the whole time coming up with reasons why my characters do this … It wasn’t really their fault,” she said, explaining that even when she tried to excise conscience, her character kept expressing “moral scruples” and second thoughts.
“You inevitably fold parts of yourself into your creations,” said Ware. “The spark that makes it come alive is often the little bit of you in there.”
Panelists likened character creation to Frankenstein work. “You take the irritating habit of that co‑worker, the weird couple you saw in a restaurant, bits of friends and enemies, and stitch them together,” said Ware.
But real-world perspective reframed the literary exercise in stark terms. Kantaria recounted teaching a prison writing class and quoting the facility director, who told her, “It’s not full of monsters. It’s normal people who made a bad decision.” She recalled being struck that many inmates were “one silly decision” away from the crimes that put them behind bars. “Any one of us could be one decision away from jail time,” she said.
The panelists also turned to scientific findings through the discussion. Ware cited infant studies showing babies prefer helpers to hinderers in puppet shows, suggesting “we are born with a natural propensity to be attracted to good.”
Candlish referenced twin studies and research on narrative: People who can form a coherent story about trauma often “have much better outcomes,” she explained.
“Both things will end up being super, super neat,” she said of genes and upbringing, before turning to the redemptive power of storytelling: “When we can make sense of what happened to us, we cope better.”
As the session closed, McGinley steered the panel away from tidy answers. Villainy, the authors agreed, is rarely the product of an immutable core; more often, it is assembled from ordinary impulses, missteps and circumstances. For writers like Kantaria, Candlish and Ware, the task is not to excuse cruelty but “to understand the fragile architecture that holds it together,” and to ask readers to inhabit uncomfortable but necessary perspectives.
