Make it ours

Make it ours Crashing the gates of culture with Virgil Abloh

Robin Givhan

Book - 2025

"Virgil Abloh's appointment as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton in 2018 shocked the fashion industry, as he became the first Black designer to serve as artistic director in the brand's 164-year history. But as Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic Robin Givhan reveals, Abloh's story encompasses so much more than his own journey. Using Abloh's surprising path to the top of the luxury establishment, Givhan unfolds the larger story of how the cloistered, exclusive fashion world faced a revolution from below in the form of streetwear and designers unafraid to storm the gates--how their notions of what was luxury simultaneously anticipated and upended consumer preferences, and how a simple T-shirt held as much cultural... power as a haute couture gown. As Givhan relays, Abloh rose during a time of existential angst for a fashion industry trying to make sense of its responsibilities to a diverse audience and the challenges of selling status to a generation of consumers who fetishized sneakers and prioritized comfort. The story of how that moment came to be, and how someone like Abloh--who had no formal training in pattern-making or tailoring--could come to symbolize and embody the industry's way forward, is the story at the heart of this book. Make It Ours is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh's family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from visionary Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh's mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man's rise amid a cultural moment that would upend a century's worth of ideas about luxury and taste."--

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Subjects
Abloh, Virgil, > 1980-2021.
African American fashion designers > Biography.
Fashion designers > United States > Biography.
Biographies.
BIO035000.
SOC001000.
SOC022000.
Genres
Biographies
BIO035000
SOC001000
SOC022000
Published
New York : Crown [2025]
Language
English
Main Author
Robin Givhan (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xi, 322 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9780593444122
  • Prologue
  • Introduction
  • 1. A Seventeen-Year-Old in Rockford
  • 2. Tilling the Soil
  • 3. Chicago, Crown Hall, and Building a Community
  • 4. The Outsiders
  • 5. The Art Project and Something for Himself
  • 6. Sneakers
  • 7. A Win for the Culture?
  • 8. A Once-in-a-Century Storm
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
Review by Booklist Review

Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist Givhan (The Battle of Versailles, 2015) reflects on the intersections of race, tastemaking, power, and fashion in her new biography of Virgil Abloh (1980--2021), a polymath who earned degrees in engineering and architecture before collaborating with Nike on an iconic collection of sneakers and winning one of the most coveted roles in fashion, artistic director at Louis Vuitton. Abloh emerges as genial, savvy, and brilliantly creative, but Givhan uses his "extraordinary career trajectory" to tell a story that goes beyond the individual. She acknowledges and details the vast web of pathbreakers (like fashion designers Patrick Kelley and Ozwald Boateng, known for his exquisite tailoring), mentors (including graphic designer Peter Saville), and collaborators (most notably Kanye West) who made Abloh's meteoric rise possible and, in some cases, dedicates full chapters to them. This refreshing take on biography celebrates individual achievement by placing it in a dynamic social and cultural context. It is just the right treatment for Abloh, who, as Givhan argues, built his design career by celebrating and facilitating community.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This bracing account from Pulitzer Prize--winning critic Givhan (The Battle of Versailles) explores how designer Virgil Abloh, who died of cancer at age 41 in 2021, transformed the fashion world. Growing up in Rockford, Ill., Abloh straddled disparate worlds and traditions, embracing hip-hop fashion as enthusiastically as he did the preppy uniforms he wore to his Catholic high school. An architect by training, Abloh began his fashion career in 2012 with the T-shirt brand Pyrex Vision, for which he created pieces that generated meaning by placing old items in new contexts. For instance, Givhan argues that Abloh's customizations of Ralph Lauren flannels juxtaposed his background as the son of Ghanaian immigrants with the brand's blue-blooded reputation, implying that "the Dream was more valuable because of his contribution to it." Elsewhere, Givhan offers detailed accounts of Abloh's working relationship with Kanye West, whom Abloh designed stage sets and album covers for, and his appointment as the first Black artistic director of Louis Vuitton, where he reimagined luxury for a more diverse customer base. The sharp blend of biography, cultural history, and fashion criticism makes effective use of Abloh's story to speak to a recent tectonic shift inside the fashion industry as it reconsiders the meaning of luxury and who gets to decide. The result is an excellent testament to Abloh's enduring influence. Agent: David Kuhn and Nate Muscato, Aevitas Creative Management. (June)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Paying tribute to a pioneering designer. Virgil Abloh's life story did not presage his role as Louis Vuitton's first Black artistic director. The child of Ghanian immigrants, Abloh grew up in small-town Illinois with no ties to the fashion industry. In college, he studied business, and in graduate school, architecture. His master's program brought him to Chicago, where he became rapper Kanye West's trusted friend. Instead of pursuing architecture, Abloh founded a brand called Off-White that grew out of his experimentation with printing graphics on luxury T-shirts. Although some critiqued the collection's focus on image rather than silhouettes, Abloh's work was enough to make him a finalist for the esteemed LVMH Prize. Journalist and author Givhan credits Abloh's success to a combination of the rise of Black streetwear and the designer's visionary talent. She writes, "Abloh rose during a time of existential angst for a fashion industry trying to make sense of its responsibilities to an increasingly diverse audience, its power to shape identity, and the challenges of selling status to a generation of consumers who fetishized sneakers, prioritized comfort, and had little use for rhapsodic nostalgia." This evolution in the fashion industry, Givhan argues, created a space where Abloh excelled, in part, because he lacked the "familiar bona fides" required of most designers. Sometimes, the author spends more time on Abloh's line of work than on his life--Abloh was only 41 when he died of cancer in 2021. But the book amply displays her deep knowledge of the fashion industry and her understanding of how history, culture, and systems of oppression shape style. A finely tailored biography of a prestigious designer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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