This week, I won’t talk about music specifically, but about an aspect of music, through the scope of a fashion designer, Virgil Abloh, whose work is not limited to fashion but also connects to other worlds as architecture, marketing, and music.
Retrospective of a Fashion Designer at the MCA
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (MCA) offered the public the first retrospective of the multi-talented artist Virgil Abloh. Displayed from June until September 2019, the exhibition titled “Virgil Abloh: ‘Figures of Speech’ ” brought a lot of people to the museum (more than 100, 000), which makes this show the third successful exhibition ever at the MCA, after David Bowie’s and Takashi Murakami’s. However, it is important to notice that Virgil Abloh’s exhibition didn’t just attract people from different backgrounds. Above all, it attracted a lot of young people, which is not that common.
The exhibition “Figures of Speech” presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago recounts the rising career of Virgil Abloh who, from a degree in architecture in Chicago, Illinois, became in 2008 the artistic director of the famous luxury brand Louis Vuitton based in Milan.
The link with the music, do you ask?
The style!
The Importance of Clothes in The Music Industry
After the beat and the lyrics, I think that nothing is more important for a rapper than their style. Sometimes, the latter is even prioritized over the quality of the music… I won’t give names though; I’m not this kind of person.
Over his career, Virgil Abloh did a lot of collaborations with rappers, with his most famous one being Kanye West. Abloh and West met during an internship at Fendi, another italian fashion company. Abloh worked for a time with West and collaborated on the cover for Jay-Z and Kanye West’s album Watch the Throne. Yet, the two men followed their own path and had the career that we know today.
Despite the fact that he is the first black director for the Louis Vuitton’s men’s wear collection, Virgil Abloh is famous for mixing things that are theoretically opposed: “high” and “low”culture, and in the case of fashion, luxe and streetwear. His work is also characteristic of the culture of appropriation, where something already existing is taken over, parodied or transformed. A good example is this three meters long belt from the Off-White collection that looks like industrial ribbons.
The belt, which has been promoted by Wiz Khalifa who wore one, was pinned on the wall for the exhibition, like a painting or a sculpture. You can also buy one on the internet for the little amount of $200… I am telling you: the style is everything
Although, the gallery dedicated to Abloh’s commitment in the music industry showed that the artist’s fashion identity goes beyond clothes. It is a whole life style, that goes well with famous rappers’ one; that is to say pretending to be subversive while being stylish and wearing expensive clothes. Next to the belt was a portrait of Chicago artist Chief Keef wearing a tee-shirt imitating the brand Supreme, but whose box logo has been readapted with the colors of the Pan-African flag, red, black, and green.
Virgil Abloh’s work, and somehow also his success, reflects that, nowdays, and more than ever, the Hip Hop culture is not only about lyrics or credibility. The clothes rappers choose to wear express their identity and their political ideas.
I see this newsletter as a space of sharing (since we can’t really talk right). So if you have any artist or song you’d like me to talk about, don’t hesitate to answer this email!!!