Virgil Abloh is an American fashion designer and entrepreneur who founded the label Off-White. He believes fashion is a form of art and strives to push boundaries and evolve the industry. Some of his most popular collaborations include partnerships with Nike, Jimmy Choo, and Ikea. Abloh uses techniques like adding his signature tag and changing designs by 3% to put his unique spin on pieces. He has faced some controversy but remains dedicated to supporting social causes and using his platform to advocate for marginalized groups.

1. Contextual Research

2. Virgil Abloh -American designer, entrepreneur, and DJ who has been the artistic director
of Louis Vuitton men's wear collection since March 2018 and chief executive officer of the Milan-
based label Off-White, a fashion house he founded in 2013.
Virgil Abloh was born in 1980 in Chicago to 2 Ghanaian immigrant parents, he went to school, university and was also designing
clothes the whole way through. He never started with any wealth of fame and never aspired to have it, everything he has ever
done has been for the art. He believes that fashion is just a form of art but with a different canvas Virgil appears to believe there is
no end to the possibilities with fashion and most of the quotes I have gathered show this for example “there's a new space to be
defined” “art is made in hindsight” “its important to evolve and not sit in one place” “essentially I’m just an assistant to the people that
came before me trying to add to go forward for the next generation.”
Virgil Abloh's most popular collaborations
-Off-White x Nike
-Off-White x Jimmy Choo
-Off-White x Ikea
-Off-White x Takashi Murakami
-Off-White x A-COLD-WALL *
-Off-White x Timberland
-Off-White x KM20
-KITH x Off-White
Virgil Abloh's main brand is Off-White, a street fashion brand aimed at millennials. Virgil
believes that Off-White is a logic more than a brand, you can dress how you want but still
be Off-White, he views the brands clothes as a uniform where you don’t have to wear
them or you can or you can mix it up with some of each.
The main logo of Off-White is his square logo and also the quotation marks. Virgil believes
that “writing is an inherent part of understanding the material on a deeper level” this is
why he uses the use of quotation marks so much in his art/designs, in his eyes it adds
more depth. Some of the quotations are simply what the item is for example “scarf”, but
in other instances there are deeper quotes or almost jokes for example “Virgil was here”
Another quirk of Virgil's work is that he likes to change things by 3%. This is something he does mainly with collaborations, for example when he
worked with Nike, he took a pre existing shoe and added designs to it and his signature plastic tag, a lot of people came after Virgil saying that this is
plagiarism however he and the rest of the fashion community highly enjoy these works and they have ended up being some of the most sought after
shoes made by Virgil with a very high resale value. Another controversy to do with Virgil was during the 2020 BLM riots where he donated 50$ towards
a charity, he came under extreme fire considering his net worth and the fact that he himself is a POC. To this he replied that he had donated more than
20,000 towards peoples bail arrested at the riots and implied he only mentioned the 50$ as it was part of a group of less wealthy friends doing the
same and that he didn’t want to brag. While delivering this message he made it very clear that he will continue to help and stand up for his community
“I will continue to donate more and will continue to use my voice to urge my peers to do the same”. During this time he also stated “the looting of
businesses during the George Floyd protests was an example of why streetwear is dead.“

4. Kurt Cobain –American Singer-songwriter, musician, visual artist
Kurt Cobain is the guitarist, songwriter and lead singer of
the band Nirvana, one of the biggest bands in existence.
Kurt's childhood wasn’t good, his parents divorced when
he was a teenager and passed him around because neither
of them wanted to deal with him. On his 14th birthday he
was offered either a bike or a used guitar from his uncle, he
chose the guitar and that was the start of his music career,
he started a smaller band before nirvana called Fecal
matter which inevitably went nowhere and was dispended.
After nirvana was formed the banned rose to fame very
quickly and went from having nothing to everything. From
what I can find Kurt hated being a celebrity, he hated the
throne he was placed on and how he now had to follow so
many rules and preform to a certain standard, to him it was
always just about the music, he used music as his form of
escapism, that and weed and heroin.
All but 2 of nirvanas songs where written by Kurt, the
content of them ranges from stories in newspapers,
his real life struggles , his relationship with his ex
girlfriends, wife and heroin and there are even songs
about his favourite book (perfume). In an interview
in1993 one of the last interviews done with Kurt he
talks about the book perfume and how much he loves
it, he talks about how he relates the main character in
the book who is a perfume maker in France who hates
humans so much he runs away and avoids them at all
costs, this plays into one of the things Kurt struggled
with which was dealing with people, Kurt took
criticism to heart no matter what it was, he preferred
being alone and he didn’t like when people
misinterpreted him or gave criticism.
Nirvana made a total of 3 studio albums in
their time, Never mind, Bleach and In Utero
between 1989 and 1993. sadly in 1994 Kurt
died at the age of 27 officially due to
suicide but a lot of people speculate he was
murdered by his wife Courtney Love.
Kurt stood up for a lot of things and was a
notorious feminist, he made a lot of very
deep songs about how wrong the world can
be especially to women. One of the most
notorious songs is Polly. A song based on a
true story about an old man kidnapping a
14 year old girl from a concert and both
raping and torturing her before she
escapes. The song tells the whole story to a
very simplistic guitar melody and just for
added affect the lyrics are written from the
perspective of the rapist. This song is paints
a completely different version to this story
than the one portraited by the police and
really helps you understand how horrific
the event was. This couldn’t have been told
in a more horrific way than by Kurt alone in
a room with a 30$ basically broken guitar
Kurt's early music can still be found as he used to record a lot of cassettes in his room, a lot of nirvanas most
popular songs where written years before in his bedroom recorded on a bad cassette recorder. He would
originally make songs with his guitar and nothing else, the songs all have different lyrics from the official
versions that where released, some of the songs he made where a lot darker and sounded more depressing,
dark and sad and ended up being completely different when officially made. This was another things nirvana
did well, they made loud upbeat music that had very deep and sad lyrics and you can just enjoy the music but
looking and reading the lyrics shows a completely different side. Kurt would often pretend the words in his
songs had no meaning and he just thought of them on the spot but this was probably to do with him just not
wanting people to know how he truly felt or at least he didn’t want people to criticise his lyrics if they knew
what they really meant.

6. Kenneth Cappello
Kenneth Cappello is an American photographer most famous for taking pictures of celebrities for magazines, brands and just
general photos of them. He was born in 1977 and at the age of 11 was given a camera by his adopted father that was his
aunts, he was given the camera after she was murdered and was told ‘See that thing in the middle? Just make sure that’s in
the middle of the photo, and you’ll be okay.’ he started out just taking pictures of animals and toys etc but gave up on it as it
was more of a hobby. At 17 he travelled to new York where his car was stolen and he was forced to couch surf and live for a
while, while living there he would go to a lot of rock shows and do more photography. Eventually he landed a job working for
a photographer making backdrops, he read about this in a magazine and realised it was big money for easy work so he
wanted to do it. After working like this for a few years he moved on and slowly rose to where he is at now.
Some of his most famous work is the stuff he did with American luxury clothing brand supreme, he photographed people like
mike Tyson and his photos where used on the official supreme t shirts, these shirts became famous in the fashion world and
resell for 100s even 1000s of pounds. Most of the photos he takes are of celebrities and after having a short look through his
page I understood how big this man really is, he has worked with 100s of celebrities form Billie Eilish to Dr Dre. One
interesting thing about him is that he hates the photography industry because of what it has become, he just loves pictures
no matter what kind and what they where taken on. He feels that now the industry has changed to a point where he will be
offered a job with a celebrity and be given 13 minutes to make a shoot that would cost 10k and only be given 2k to work with
and no where near enough time and that people trying to become photographers now have some stupid moral code that will
stop them from going anywhere. In an interview he says that anyone wanting to be a photographer should just go be
something else and talks about times where he has gone for shoots and asked, “who else did was up for this job” and they
have replied “some people but they declined the job because we use digital”. This is what he means by some form of code,
people will try and survive in a hard job where you rarely get work and still refuse some jobs because they think they are to
original and cool to use digital where it should just be about the photography.

8. Contextual statement
I am going to make a fashion magazine for my FMP I am going to make this
because it is what I enjoy the most and it is what I think I can show my
talents in the best considering the pandemic going on while I make it. For my
fashion magazine I will focus on streetwear and luxury brands, I have a lot of
knowledge on these subjects and since these styles are fairly popular I wont
struggle finding people in person to photograph and I can do this while not
breaking social distancing guidelines if I approach said person while wearing
a mask and take the photo from at least 6 feet away. I am going to make this
magazine to show off my photography and also show my knowledge on the
subjects I am writing about while providing some insight and interesting
material to read. I will make the magazine around 30 pages long and include
a variety of people in it making sure there is a lot of diversity

9. • http://www.kennethcappello.com/fashion-celebrity
• https://www.goat.com/greatest/kenneth-cappello