Virgil Abloh, the chief executive officer of Louis Vuitton’s menswear, is making his fashion predictions for the next decade.
Abloh, who was a Chicago street fashion influencer launched his career starting out as an intern at Fendi in 2009, alongside rapper Kanye West, who he would go on to collaborate with.
The 39-year-old designer — who founded Milan-based label Off-White in 2013 — feels people prefer to express their style through vintage pieces these days, rather than “boxfresh” hoodies, sneakers and T-shirts.
He told Dazed: “Wow. I would definitely say it’s gonna die, you know? Like, its time will be up.
“In my mind, how many more T-shirts can we own, how many more hoodies, how many sneakers?
“I think that, like, we’re gonna hit this, like, really awesome state of expressing your knowledge and personal style with vintage — there are so many clothes that are cool that are in vintage shops, and it’s just about wearing them.
“I think that fashion is gonna go away from buying a boxfresh something; it’ll be, like, hey I’m gonna go into my archive.”
Abloh also spoke of what it means to be a fashion designer, insisting that there is more to clothes than the fabric they are made of, while he added how proud he is to have had the nerve to make “something of his own.”
He said: “You know, I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s and in that generation.We had our own idea of what a fashion designer is, and we had our own idea of what a musician was — people would say that hip-hop is just sampling, that it’s not even, like, playing the piano…
“As a fashion designer, I’ve had enough of a thick skin to explore and make (it) something of my own.”
He added: “I believe being a fashion designer is selling it short if it’s just limited to making clothes.
“A piece of clothing is more important than the fabric it’s made of — it’s representative, it means something.
“It says something about a generation, a brand … when I think of fashion brands, I immediately think of, like, United Colours of Benetton or Ralph Lauren, or Margiela — just say a brand or say a designer and it takes you to a different place because everything they did embodied something.
“That to me is what a fashion designer is today, not simply the antiquated version of what the term means.”
