Virgil Abloh’s Body of Work

This series of warm-ups explores works by Virgil Abloh over a series of lessons. Abloh’s work, from his clothing articles to his advertisements, are complex, figurative, and intertextual. Virgil Abloh is a visionary designer who embraces the ideals of Walt Whitman and applies them to the commercial world. His designs, and their advertisements, embrace the contradictions of the human condition, expressing them through symbolism and language play. With Abloh, his designs can be taken at face value, but to do so would almost always miss the point. His work aims to explore the heart of high fashion (What is it? Who is it for? Why do we idolize it?), transforming the status quo. He embraces cultural influences and opportunities to collaborate. He is also involved in every step of the design process, from conception to advertisement.

The series of warm ups below survey Abloh’s work exploring a variety of mediums, but mostly focusing on advertising. To Virgil Abloh, his fashion merchandise is a much of a “text” as their advertisements. This fluidity might make our student and teacher brains balk a bit (What is this text type?!), but for Abloh, that is kind of the point. His embracing of complexity and ambiguity forces us to reflect on our own rigidity and compartmentalization. While this might seem a bit much for high school students, the name recognition wins them over and makes them game for the challenge: to be able to intelligently discuss the undertones of Off White label creator’s recent designs and advertisements gives them a social currency that is hard to pass up.

Teaching Resources

A Note about the Resources

Warm-ups
These warm-ups are designed to take around 15 minutes at the start of class. While some of these warm-ups could easily be transformed into whole lessons, the value here is in practicing close reading skills and covering a breadth of content.

Reading Strategies
Each warm-up is paired with a known reading strategy. This helps students see how they can apply known and practiced reading strategies to new media forms. This can also serve as a helpful review for students who have forgotten or never learned formal reading strategies.

IB Teachers and “Bodies of Work”
If you are an IB teacher, then you may need to supplement this body of work with more of Virgil Abloh’s advertisements since the IB Language and Literature Subject Guide states that a “body of work” must be of one text type sharing the same authorship (p. 22). This site contains several pieces of his work (as well as interviews and other related texts), or you can search for ads under the labels for which he is the artistic director (currently Off White and Louis Vuitton). It’s worth doing a Google video search for ads as well; Abloh frequently collaborates with other labels and designers, from Nike to Ikea.

Ads by Louis Vuitton, 2019

Concept Formation Notes on “The Black Gaze”

The protocol used for this “Concept Formation” activity can be found here:

Concept Formation