Who is the man that everybody in fashion is talking about?

Virgil grew up middle-class in Rockford, Illinois, the son of Ghanaian immigrants who let him DJ on the weekends but also made sure he went not only to college at the University of Wisconsin, where he got an engineering degree but also to graduate school at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he studied architecture.

Virgil was young and already confirmed cool in Chicago at the exact moment Kanye was becoming Kanye (College Dropout). The day they started working together in 2003 was the day of Virgil’s graduation, most of which his missed to take a meeting with Kanye’s then manager, John Monopoly.

He offered his own good taste and a willingness to design merchandise and Kanye, perpetually drawn to people who know what he doesn’t, and who had already met Virgil a few times around Chicago, put him on the payroll. Their partnership soon catapulted Virgil into the world of high fashion and set in motion a series of events that would lead to his historic appointment.

[No available link text]

Abloh launched Off-White in 2013 and quickly got noticed. In 2015, he was the only American to become a finalist for the prestigious LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers. He was credited with helping streetwear storm the luxury sector to take its place alongside it, without losing his cred of course. Off-White is sold at stores like Barneys New York and French concept store Colette, not to mention the Off-White boutique/ hangout spots that Abloh has designed in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other cities.

These days, bloggers, influencers, models, musicians, actors are the new figures informing the landscape of what is sartorially acceptable and Virgil has mad his name by being able to plug into that new system and work alongside it.

Kylie Jenner and Gigi Hadid, both of whom wear Off-White, use their families' influence and their own social media to mold fashion and trends. Celebrity is influence, influence is power, and the digital realm provides an ever-expanding series of platforms from which to wield it.

Abloh understands this phenomenon of influence well and relies heavily on the ideas of trusted friends and advisors to provide him with intellectual material.

Speaking to Esquire magazine, Abloh said, "I'm constantly inspired by my friends and the people I surround myself with and the cities that I'm traveling to," he says. "All the movements are made up by my brain trust. None of us sip the Kool-Aid. We're all individuals; we're all critics; we all look at things from a discerning eye, and I synthesize those things. I'm sort of a conduit. I look at my friends, and I'm like, 'What could they get out of it?' And I sort of plug them in, and then I vicariously get what I need, which is inspiration, and, then, what they get out of it is a voice."

Abloh has often been criticised for pandering to those celebrity friends that he calls himself a conduit for. It has been claimed that its due to his circle of influence that he was able to scale the lofty heights of the fashion industry in record time. I mean, having Kanye West as a close friend can't hurt right?

Off-White has been widely criticised as being a smart combination of all the great designers. Rather than being the design wizkid that he's been made out to be, Virgil has been called a 'curator' more than anything. Skillfully picking the best of the best and infusing it into his Off-White line and reaping the rewards of its inevitable success.

Call him what you will and speak of him as you wish but Virgil's influence on the fashion industry is undeniable. Just when we though Adidas had scooped Nike with their infamous Kanye West collaboration and the birth of the legendary 'Yeezy's', Abloh swiped back Nike's crown by reinventing the original basketball shoe and turning it into something exciting, modern and like most things Virgil touches, painfully cool.

His line of Nike sneakers sell out before they even touch the ground and have achieved cult status in such a short amount of time.

[No available link text]

Whether Virgil can do for what he did for himself remains to be seen.

Perhaps he will destroy the legacy of the fashion house or catapult it into a new sphere of design and do for it what Alessandro Michele.

However, Virgil, is the first black man to be appointed the head of design for a luxury fashion house and that alone has been a feat for black representation in the world of design. His appointment has validated the dreams of many young black designers and showed them that with persistence and hard work, anything is possible.

Like him or not, Virgil has done this for the culture!