In Make it Ours, the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic explores how Abloh cracked open luxury fashion’s gates — and what his legacy means today.
–Zara Korutz
Virgil Abloh was, in the words of Robin Givhan, a phenomenon who “embraced contemporary Black culture along with Black people” — a designer who cracked open the gates of an insular luxury fashion system. When Louis Vuitton appointed Abloh as Menswear Creative Director in 2018, he became the first person of color to hold such a creative leadership role in the storied French fashion house’s old history. Later that year, TIME named him one of its 100 most influential people.
Virgil Abloh @ G-SHOCK’s 35th Anniversary Event by j-No licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
My fascination with Abloh began during the 2018 Vogue Paris Fashion Festival, where he took the stage alongside Alexandre Arnault, then CEO of LVMH-owned Rimowa. Abloh — freshly installed at Louis Vuitton — outlined what he called a “new” framework for luxury, one that foregrounded emotional connection by fulfilling dreams and sparking desire.It was a moment that reshaped my own career trajectory, prompting me to step away from a successful advertising career to pursue graduate study at Central Saint Martins in London — a path that ultimately led me to devote my doctoral research to Abloh’s work.
Abloh’s career was tragically cut short when he passed away in 2021 at just 41, following a private battle with a rare cancer. In the years since, his influence has only grown, yet there has been surprisingly little serious literature on his design philosophy — until now. Enter Make it Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh, the new book from Pulitzer Prize–winning fashion critic and Washington Post Critic-at-Large Robin Givhan.
Published by Crown New York, Make it Ours situates Abloh within the high-stakes, high-barrier ecosystem of luxury fashion — a system deeply intertwined with race, gender, class, and power dynamics. In her prologue, Givhan pinpoints the essence of Abloh’s appeal:
“He may not have been the most inventive… He certainly was not the most outspoken. But he had charisma and curiosity, confidence and calm. He was smart. He was genial. He was talented.”
Givhan’s analysis is particularly sharp in unpacking how Abloh deconstructed the binary between “high” European white culture and “low” American Black culture. He was, she writes, “part of a generation of designers who saw luxury fashion not as an exclusive preserve, but as something they had as much right to shape as anyone else”.
While institutions of fashion, art, and design now acknowledge the seriousness of Abloh’s work, detractors dismissed it as unoriginal — an accusation Givhan deftly rebuts. Her book is part biography, part cultural critique, and part institutional reckoning, enriched by intimate insights from Abloh’s collaborators, friends and family.
Ultimately, Make it Ours is not just about one man’s legacy; it’s about dismantling the monolithic systems of fashion and reframing them towards equity. It fills a crucial gap in both knowledge and cultural discourse, offering the serious engagement Abloh’s work deserves.
Robin Givhan will discuss Make it Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh at The Museum at FIT on August 26, 2025, at 5:30 p.m., followed by a book signing (first come, first served). Registration for the free event is available HERE.
Zara Korutz is a writer, academic, and media expert. Her work explores the intersections of fashion, art, culture, and identity, and her PhD project explores the work of Virgil Abloh. She lives in New York with her dog Bijou.
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