Virgil Abloh Research Paper

Off-White ™ is a designer street wear brand established in 2013 by Virgil Abloh. This brand has just recently been nominated for a fashion award by “CFDA Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent”. Off-White ™ has made an appearance all over the world with a store even in Yorkville, Toronto. This brand started getting popular because lots of artists started wearing Virgil’s brand including Justin Bieber, Drake, A$AP Rocky, Jay Z and so many more. This company has quite an interesting history. Off White ™ has done a few collaborations (also known as “collabs”) including the big ones “Off White ™ x Ikea and “Off White™ x Nike The Ten”. While Virgil designs all of his clothing, he goes by seven rules that he calls his “Personal Design Language”.

It was established in 2013 by Virgil Abloh. Virgil Abloh lived in Chicago and went to University of Wisconsin.Virgil did not always know that he was going to be the founder of a worldwide brand. For all of his life he wanted to be an architect and design buildings. Then Virgil Abloh was Kanye West’s director and DJ. He then figured out a way to use designing buildings and turn it into designing clothing. Once, when Virgil was with his friend , the friend picked up an “Air Force One” (Nike shoe) and took a sharpie from his desk. He then scribbled all over the shoe. Virgil considered that to be very inspiring. From then on Virgil has used the tool of a marker to draw on shoes. For example, one of the shoes in the “Nike x Off-White ™ The Ten” (a collab that Off-White ™ has done)on the “Jordan One” he wrote “Air” in sharpie on the sole. This will be further discussed in the next paragraph. It was then, in 2013 that “Off-White ™ ” officially became an official brand. This was a brief summary of the history of Off-White

Virgil describes this personal design language as a list of rules that designers use. His first rule describes readymade-new ideas based on recognizable parts, human emotion, irony.Virgil is obsessed with “readymade”. He loves when other artists leave ideas for him to base his art on. The second rule is “Figure of speech” or the “Quotes”. Virgil puts everything in quotes. He feels that quotes add a bit of humour to his work. He also feels that it allows him to say two things at a time. The third rule is his 3% approach. Virgil states that “ right now, I am only interested in editing something to 3% of it’s original form.” That means that he will only change 3% of the item. He says that he does not want to see another shoe and that he wants to recognize the original shoe. The fourth rule uses a compromise between similar or dissimilar notations. Virgil always is comparing two things whether they are similar, dissimilar or they are the exact same thing. That is how he determines whether a dress is done or not or the graphic on a t-shirt is done. He calls it an internal measuring stick. Another rule is about signs of “work in progress”,again a human interaction.Virgil used to be a perfectionist and once he “outgrew” that phase was when he created that rule. Another rule is about a societal commentary. He has a reason to exist now. Before he makes his