Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh

by Robin Givhan Narrated by Robin Givhan

Overview

“An illuminating . . . biography and cultural history” (The New York Times) of Virgil Abloh's iconic rise to the top of the fashion industry, which embodied a groundbreaking transformation of the relationship between who we are and what we wear.

“[Robin Givhan] captures that shift with the kind of clarity and nuance that honors the late designers' many layers. There's never been a book like this.”-Essence

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Toggling between biography and cultural history, Givhan . . . offers an illuminating analysis of [Virgil] Abloh’s middle-class, first-generation American upbringing, one that suggests his quiet confidence and seeming unflappability were deliberately cultivated.”—The New York Times

“[A] deeply reported, genre-defying chronicle of the late designer’s mission to remap luxury from the inside out.”—Ebony

“Virgil Abloh . . . changed the way upper echelons of the [fashion] industry engage with younger generations and even social media. In Make It Ours, [Robin Givhan] captures that shift with the kind of clarity and nuance that honors the late designer’s many layers.”—ESSENCE

“Legendary . . . incisive and unflinching . . . One of [Givhan’s] gifts is the acute power of observation.”—SSENSE Magazine

“Robin Givhan’s powerful new book explores a fashion legacy—and a life—that stretched far beyond labels. . . . The book is less a biography than it is a study of success in fashion and culture: the parameters around it, the roadblocks toward it, the precedents others have set for it.”—Harper's Bazaar

“Givhan’s book . . . is both a soft-focus biography and—far more valuably—a chronicle of the evolution and hybridisation of fashion, social media and Black American culture from 1980 (the year Abloh was born) to the current decade. . . . Make It Ours is the best book on the luxury business since Teri Agins’ Hijacking the Runway.”—Financial Times

“What makes Givhan’s book so compelling is not only her analysis of the designer’s creativity and ambition, but the historical context she builds around it—a reminder why [she] is an American icon in her own right.”—Vanessa Friedman, Interview magazine

“Many journalists can vividly describe what’s around them, but only the most talented can identify—in pretty much any public figure, any public event—worlds of meaning that the rest of us miss.”—Frank Bruni, The New York Times

“Givhan’s prose is elegant and cutting. [She] has written the definitive portrait of Virgil Abloh . . . a story about the future of fashion, and who deserves to shape it.”—DSCENE

“Robin’s look into the life and work of the late, great, Virgil Abloh is thoughtful, intelligent, honest, and masterfully crafted. Virgil’s freethinking and influence on the possibilities of what creativity can be was a tour de force.”—Marc Jacobs, founding creative director of Louis Vuitton ready-to-wear

“Thought-provoking, emotional, and illuminating, this book is a definite must-read!”—Tom Ford, designer and filmmaker

“Givhan tells the story of Virgil Abloh not just from the facts of where and when he was born and where he grew up, but what he stood for and what he wanted to communicate with the work he was doing.”—Political Fashion

“Make It Ours is more than a biography of Abloh’s rise and reign in the fashion world. Givhan deftly balances her intimate portrait of him with analysis of how the fashion industry has dealt with race and racism over the past century.”—The Washington Post

“Make It Ours [is] informed by a deep curiosity. . . . The book is filled with industry anecdotes that’ll thrill any fashion fan.”—W Magazine

“A brilliant, captivating book. Make It Ours makes the case for a true cultural giant.”—Elaine Welteroth, bestselling author of More Than Enough

“Virgil’s journey from humble beginnings to the top of the fashion industry is one that needs to be studied. Make It Ours is a thrilling journey into the mind of a genius.”—Edward Enninful, former editor in chief of British Vogue

“[Make It Ours] chronicles the intersection of a man and a moment, a time of disruptive change in the fashion industry, and a figure who was uniquely primed to seize that opportunity.”—ELLE

“[Givhan’s] sharp blend of biography, cultural history, and fashion criticism . . . reconsiders the meaning of luxury and who gets to decide.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Kirkus Reviews

2025-05-16
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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193639978
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/24/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

A Seventeen-Year-Old in Rockford

“Everything I do is for the seventeen-year-old version of myself.” Abloh would repeat this sentence like a mantra. He measured his accomplishments against the dreams and passions of a teenager teetering on the cusp of adulthood. He tailored his creativity and messaging to the wonder and skepticism of adolescence.

Many designers have used childhood memories as a source of inspiration. The tale of having been infatuated watching their mother or aunt or older sister or best friend prepare for an outing is practically a cliché. It is a stock element in the origin story of almost every male designer—the way they came to understand fashion as a transformative endeavor. But rarely has a designer spoken of his own teenage self as the inspiration for his adult work.

“When I was starting, I was very much to the left. Formality was at the root of what high fashion was, and I said, to make a name for myself, I’m not going to wave a magic wand and speak from that perspective. I’m going to speak from the perspective of what I was as a seventeen-year-old kid and what I saw from these brands that I could relate to,” Abloh said. “Instead of making my career about myself or the industry, it’s permanently focused on the seventeen-year-old that will be in my seat next.”

For much of his professional life, Abloh engaged in a conversation with his younger self and with the youth around him. This was a sign of his enduring optimism. It was also his savvy understanding of the power of a rising consumer.

It was a sentiment that made sense for a man whose career success relied on an intimate understanding of the desires and anxieties of young men. It was a way of acknowledging his constant engagement with youth culture. And it was a way of exempting himself from the industry’s traditional expectations of luxury. He was talking to the teenagers, not the suits. Indeed, he often said he still felt like an adolescent even as he was moving into his forties.

Abloh, a tall, lanky teenager, grew up in Rockford, Illinois, at a time when it was undergoing racial upheaval, demographic shift, and political tumult. A tenacious soccer player, he was surrounded by mostly White and Latino teammates. He was someone with a sense of community and an attitude of generosity. He was a style-conscious teenager at a time when it was almost impossible not to be. Fashion’s creativity—Ralph Lauren, Stüssy, Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica, FUBU—was colliding with youth culture and social responsibility in a way that it had not since the 1960s. He was a kid from nowhere America learning about the wider world of style from glossy magazines published in Europe and Japan—precious analog commodities ordered from the local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Rockford was not a hotbed of experimental art and fashion.

Instead, for a time, Rockford had the ignoble title of Screw City. From the first World War through the Cold War, the modest Rust Belt town led the way in the country’s production of screws and bolts. This gave Rockford bragging rights of a sort, along with a sturdy economy built on manufacturing. Rockford proudly made things—until making things was no longer valued.

The city’s modern-day population is about 146,120 a number that has fluctuated by only a few thousand over recent decades. Outsiders sometimes referred to Rockford as a suburb of Chicago. But that only served to rile up locals who saw a unique identity in their city that others could not. Geographically and temperamentally, Rockford is closer to Dubuque, Iowa, and Beloit, Wisconsin, than it is to Chicago, which is about ninety miles southeast. Rockford is part of a swing county of centrist voters. Chicago has practically defined Democratic machine politics. Chicago sits on the sparkling shores of Lake Michigan; Rockford is bisected by the meandering Rock River as it flows from Wisconsin into the muddy Mississippi. Abloh grew up on the thriving, prosperous side of the river that delineated the town’s demographics.

Rockford was settled in 1834, by a group of White New Englanders. Over the years, the city’s population grew thanks to a steady stream of Swedish immigrants, who were skilled woodworkers and furniture makers, as well as new arrivals from Ireland and Italy. These immigrants, most notably the Swedish, dominated the population and culture of Rockford and helped to transform it into an industrial center.

The first wave of Black residents arrived during the years surrounding World War I. Their increased numbers sparked tensions and violence from the many Italian and Irish residents whose animosity toward Blacks grew out of their own striving toward Whiteness and the privileges that accompanied a higher rung on the country’s racial hierarchy. Still, the number of Blacks remained relatively modest, and thus unthreatening, until the Great Migration in the middle of the twentieth century, when scores of African Americans streamed in from southern states in search of more personal freedom and the greater financial opportunities afforded by industrialization. Ultimately, these Black Americans came north to claim their place in the civic life of their country. By 1949, Life magazine described Rockford as “nearly as typical of the U.S. as any city could be.”

Rockford thrived economically for decades, thanks to the manufacture of cars, paint, light industry, and all those screws and bolts. But eventually its fortunes turned, and it was plagued by many of the same economic and social ills—unemployment, gang violence, and drug addiction—that hollowed out so many cities and tormented so much of the Black population. In 1991, Rockford even had its own Do the Right Thing–style protest and scuffle between an Italian American business owner and his mostly Black customers. Joe’s Dariette, a walk-up ice-cream parlor in the southwest part of the city, was housed in a small cinder block building. It had been in the neighborhood since the 1940s, when Italian immigrants dominated the area. As the surrounding modest homes changed hands and the neighborhood filled with African Americans and Hispanics, these new residents put more pressure on the family-owned ice-cream shop to hire Black workers and contribute to local charities. The flap was eventually settled—and without a trash can being hurled through a window. But the protests at Joe’s Dariette would be memorialized in the historical record and the community’s psyche as emblematic of the city’s embedded racial tensions. Eventually, Black residents would grow to 21.8 percent of Rockford’s population—the largest minority group in a city that is 55.5 percent White and with a significant Hispanic community. Abloh was a Black kid growing up in a predominantly White city with an undercurrent of racial animus.

In appearance, Rockford could be almost any medium-size city in the Midwest that saw the energy drain out of its central business district and flow into outlying neighborhoods, where much of the White population fled. Rockford’s cityscape was dominated by brick commercial buildings and warehouses from the first half of the twentieth century, along with the earnest rehabbing and unimaginative landscaping efforts that epitomized the tail end of it. The downtown bore the marks of a shrinking industrial city, one trying desperately to reclaim its lost stature in a country whose manufacturing economy had shifted to an information one. From a bird’s-eye perch, the city’s core appeared to fade into a horizon of . . . nothing. It was as though Rockford proper simply dropped off a ledge along with the setting sun.

Over the years, the Rock River separated the city not only geographically but also economically and racially. It served as the dividing line between the more prosperous east and the struggling west. There were so many lessons within Rockford’s geography about disparities of opportunity. Rockford was both urban and rural. It was struggling and expanding. It was Black and White. It was multiethnic. It was tilted toward a future of exurbs and big box stores; it was mired in the past of segregation.

Most Black residents lived on the west side of the river. The houses there were modest; neighborhoods quickly evaporated into open fields; and the lack of commercial vitality was striking. Most of the city’s public housing was also built on the west side of the river; the impacts of crack cocaine and gang culture were felt most acutely in that part of town. “The west side was not considered a safe place,” said Deryk Hayes, who grew up in Rockford during the 1980s and ’90s, the same time as Abloh.

Hayes graduated from Auburn High School, a large public high school founded in 1960 on the west side of town. At Auburn, student achievement was often overshadowed by the surrounding community, with its boarded-up houses, overgrown lots, psychic struggles, and day-to-day perils. But for every educator who viewed teaching there as professional purgatory, there were others who aimed to instill pride and possibility in their students. Auburn housed programs for the performing arts and gifted students. Among its graduates, it lays claim to Michelle Williams, who found success as part of Destiny’s Child, and more recently basketball player Fred VanVleet.

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