How Virgil Abloh Changed The Conversation Around Fashion

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How Virgil Abloh Changed The Conversation Around Fashion"

Podcast: The Run-Through with Vogue
Host: Nicole Phelps
Guests:

• Leah Fay Cooper, Editor of Vogue.com
• Robin Gavan, Senior Critic at Large at The Washington Post and author of Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh
  Release Date: June 27, 2025

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1. Introduction to the Episode and Guests

The episode opens with host Nicole Phelps welcoming listeners and introducing her guests, Leah Fay Cooper and Robin Gavan. Robin Gavan, renowned for her critical perspective in fashion journalism, discusses her latest book focusing on Virgil Abloh's influence in the fashion industry.

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2. Robin Gavan’s Perspective on Virgil Abloh

a. Initial Criticism

Robyn Gavan shares her early critiques of Virgil Abloh, particularly during his tenure designing women's wear for Off-White. She admits to being "pretty critical" (“[01:43] Robin Gavan”) and grapples with understanding his fit within the broader fashion context.

b. Public Reaction and Virgil's Impact

Despite her initial reservations, Gavan observes the profound and unique connection Virgil fostered with his audience, describing the relationship between him and his fans as "unlike the relationship that other designers had with their customers" (“[02:50]”). She reflects on the industry's shock at his untimely passing and the "outpouring" of admiration (“[03:04]”).

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3. Virgil Abloh's Career Path

a. Non-traditional Trajectory

Gavan highlights Virgil's unconventional journey to Louis Vuitton, noting his lack of formal design education and traditional apprenticeships. She attributes his rise to a "combination of factors" including his mastery of social media and his roots in menswear (“[04:15]”).

b. Influential Relationships

A significant factor in Virgil's ascent was his close relationship with Kanye West, which opened doors early in his career (“[05:31]”). This alliance not only boosted his visibility but also integrated his work deeply within the urban and streetwear communities.

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4. Personality and Influence

a. Virgil as an Approachable Designer

Gavan emphasizes Virgil's approachable nature, contrasting him with the stereotypical "diva" fashion designer. She describes his demeanor as "approachable" and "phantom-like" (“[05:33]”), highlighting his ability to remain grounded despite his rising fame.

b. Conflict with Kanye’s Persona

While Kanye West is often seen as volatile, Virgil maintained an "even temperament," handling setbacks with resilience and adaptability (“[06:06]”). This balance contributed to his unique standing in the fashion world.

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5. Writing the Book on Virgil

a. Interviews and Research Process

Gavan details her extensive research for her book, starting with interviews like that of Michael Burke, Virgil's mentor at LVMH. She recounts a pivotal moment in Tokyo, witnessing Virgil's unassuming coolness amidst influential figures (“[08:08]”).

b. Insights from Other Designers and Friends

She also interviewed peers such as Matthew Williams, Heron Preston, and Jerry Lorenzo, as well as Virgil’s family and educators. These conversations provided a multifaceted view of his professional landscape (“[10:33]”).

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6. Impact on Fashion

a. Changing the Conversation

Gavan asserts that Virgil expanded the scope of what fashion represents, emphasizing community and personal meaning over traditional brand prestige. He likened his influence to that of sports jerseys, where the name and affiliation carry significant cultural weight (“[12:14] Robin Gavan”).

b. Opening up Community-focused Fashion

Virgil's approach allowed individuals to connect through fashion on a deeper level, fostering a sense of belonging and identity that transcended mere aesthetics (“[14:19]”).

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7. Future of Off-White

a. Virgil’s Legacy

Discussing the brand's trajectory post-Virgil, Gavan expresses uncertainty about Off-White maintaining its same depth of meaning without his leadership. She notes that while the brand remains aesthetically strong, its communal resonance may wane (“[14:28]”).

b. Brand’s Direction Post-Virgil

She observes that Off-White is evolving into a more "traditional brand," focusing on design and color stories without the same underlying community-focused mission (“[14:28]”).

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8. Other Designers Following in His Footsteps

a. Examples like Sarah JO Hudson and Rachel Scott

Gavan mentions emerging designers such as Sarah JO Hudson and Rachel Scott of Diotima, highlighting their exceptional talent and potential to ascend to top fashion houses. She underscores the ongoing need for designers who, like Virgil, bring both skill and cultural significance to the industry (“[20:56]”).

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9. Intersection of Fashion and Culture

a. Fashion's Roots in Aspiration and Exclusivity

Gavan reflects on the intrinsic link between fashion and broader cultural aspirations. She explains that fashion serves as a symbol of aspiration and exclusivity, driving its perpetual evolution (“[26:12]”).

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10. Robin Gavan’s Background as a Fashion Critic

a. Starting in Entertainment and Techno

Before delving into fashion journalism, Gavan began her career covering nightlife and techno music in Detroit. Her initial foray into interviewing DJs and producers laid the groundwork for her analytical approach to fashion (“[21:31]” – [23:41]).

b. Detroit’s Role in Fashion Journalism

Gavan comments on the unexpected influence of Detroit in producing significant fashion critics, attributing it to the regional newspaper boom during her early career. She connects this to a broader understanding of fashion as an inclusive and culturally intertwined industry (“[24:04]” – [25:22]).

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11. Professional Criticism and Respect

a. Embracing Critical Journalism

Gavan discusses the importance of thoughtful and respectful criticism in fashion journalism. She differentiates between meaningful critique and superficial social media opinions, emphasizing that genuine criticism acknowledges the significance and effort behind a designer's work (“[28:23]” – “[32:19]”).

b. Relationship with Virgil

While maintaining a professional distance, Gavan recounts how Virgil responded to her critiques with grace and professionalism. He understood the role of criticism in the industry and didn't seek to challenge its foundational structures (“[32:35]” – “[33:49]”).

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12. Virgil’s Potential Future Contributions

a. Speculating on His Continued Influence

Gavan muses on the potential paths Virgil might have taken had he not passed away prematurely. She speculates that his work would have become even more nuanced amidst contemporary social movements and challenges within the industry (“[33:56]”).

b. The Need for More Designers Like Virgil

Concluding the discussion, both hosts affirm the necessity of designers who, like Virgil, blend creativity with cultural resonance. They agree that the fashion world still needs more visionaries who can bridge the gap between design and community (“[35:40]”).

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Conclusion

The episode delves deep into Virgil Abloh's multifaceted impact on the fashion industry, exploring his innovative approaches, the cultural connections he fostered, and his lasting legacy. Robin Gavan's insights provide a nuanced understanding of how Virgil reshaped conversations around fashion, emphasizing the importance of community, inclusivity, and meaningful design.

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Notable Quotes:

• "He was really approachable, phantom kind of designer." – Robin Gavan ([05:46])

• "He recognized that it was part of this, was how the industry worked." – Robin Gavan ([33:00])

• "A criticism is an acknowledgement that what you're doing is important and valuable." – Robin Gavan ([29:27])

• "Fashion at its roots is really about inside and outside, about aspiration, about the things that you feel like you can't easily have." – Robin Gavan ([26:12])

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the podcast episode, providing a clear and engaging overview for those who haven't listened to the full episode.

Transcript

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[Nicole Phelps]

This is the run through. I'm Nicole Phelps. I'm joined today in the studio by my colleague Leah Fay Cooper, Vogue.com's digital style director, and Robin Gavan, who is senior critic at large at the Washington Post. She's the first ever fashion writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism and she has a brand new book out called Make It Ours Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh. Welcome, Robin.

[Robin Gavan]

Thank you for having me.

[Nicole Phelps]

Thanks for being here. Leah.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Thank you for having me.

[Nicole Phelps]

Robyn, you and I have known each other for a long time.

[Robin Gavan]

Yes, we have.

[Nicole Phelps]

I've read your book about the Battle of Versailles. You've also written about a book about Michelle Obama. Why did you want to write this about Virgil Abloh?

[Robin Gavan]

Well, if you and you, I'm sure you did read some of my criticism of Virgil when he was mostly when he was designing women's wear for off white. I was pretty critical. And you know, there were definitely moments when I just did not think that his work for women like made sense in sort of the broader fashion context. But at the same time, I was really just kind of dismayed with about the way that people responded to him and his fans and his customers felt this intimacy that I thought was unlike the relationship that other designers had with their customers. And it was really that tension. After he passed away. I thought it would be really interesting to explore like what I was seeing as a critic and how I was responding so simply to the clothes and how this whole other community of people was responding to the clothes and the fact that he made them talk a.

[Nicole Phelps]

Little bit more about that response.

[Robin Gavan]

Yeah, I mean, when he died, I mean, it was shocking for the industry because he was only 41 years old and people really didn't know that he had been as ill as he was. And when he died, there was just this outpouring and not just a sort of, oh my gosh, he's so young. I mean, people were referring to him in these incredibly, to my mind at the time, really sort of inflated terms. And I remember when he got the job at Vuitton and people were responding like it was an actual sort of civil rights victory. And I thought, okay, I know it's a big brand and I know it's a big job, but really. And I wanted to dig into that because it clearly meant something on so many levels, far beyond just here's a guy who got a big job at a well known fashion house and he.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Did have such like a wildly untraditional trajectory to Louis Vuitton. And so what do you.

[Robin Gavan]

An understatement.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, he didn't go to design school. Like he didn't have a traditional apprenticeship. So what do you kind of attribute that appointment to? How did he get there?

[Robin Gavan]

Well, you know, it was, I think, a combination of a lot of things that just sort of, sort of tilled the ground. I think that's the correct agricultural term, tilling the ground. It was the fact that he had this incredible grasp of social media. It was, you know, a series of designers who certainly came before him, like Oswald Boateng and Edward Buchanan and, you know, going even farther back, people like Willie Smith. And it was this moment when menswear was ascendant and was really having an impact on the industry at large. And he really came to fashion through menswear. And then I don't think you can under understate the impact that his relationship with the artist formerly known as Kanye west played because that was also this door opening aspect to his early career.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Yeah.

[Nicole Phelps]

And you write in the book also about the impact of his personality. He was not of the old school fashion designer diva type. Right.

[Robin Gavan]

He was really approachable, phantom kind of designer.

[Nicole Phelps]

I remember meeting him for the first time and you know, he would open his mouth and I think you also wrote this in the book. And then, you know, paragraphs later, he would, he would pause for you to say something, but talk about his personality and how it influenced his success.

[Robin Gavan]

Yeah, his personality was. Well, let me backtrack and say, like the moment when I really felt like I got a chance to kind of sit was during this conversation that he was having with people who were part of the scholarship group, and they were having sort of a virtual conversation with him. And I had the opportunity to sort of facilitate that and to talk to him beforehand and then to sort of watch his interaction with these students. And there was this incredible transparency about how he got into the industry. There was a transparency about, you know, his insecurities and how he felt when he thought that he was kind of being dismissed by the industry. And it felt very real and heartfelt. And I think that came through to the students. But I don't think he really hid that when he was engaged with people in the industry. I mean, he was very much a kind of. This is what I don't know. And what can you tell me that I don't know that I don't know? So many people talked about how he had such an even temperament that he didn't get angry or visibly angry about things if they didn't go his way, which was very different from the person he was so closely associated with, which was Kanye. And he also just sort of had this ability to take a hurdle and say, okay, I can't get over that, but maybe I can go around it in this way and not be precious, not feel like everything had to be perfect.

[Nicole Phelps]

What did you learn that surprised you over the course of reporting this book? I'd love to hear how you did the work of writing it, too, in all of the interviews and the research.

[Robin Gavan]

Yeah. So one of the first interviews that I did was actually with Michael Burke.

[Nicole Phelps]

Who was his champion at lvmh. Correct?

[Robin Gavan]

Exactly. Yes, exactly. And who had agreed to let him come and be an intern at Fendi when he was running Fendi. And it was kind of an odd moment to talk to him because it was almost as if I was. That was sort of the near the end of the story, as opposed to the beginning. But it was helpful because. So the way in which Michael Burke talked about getting to know him, I thought was really instructive, because he set this scene of being in Tokyo and first meeting Virgil in the context of this big event that Fendi was having to introduce this new collection. And Kanye was performing. And the night before they went to this, they all had dinner, and it was Virgil and Kanye and Nigo and a bunch of sort of young, very cool, extraordinarily cool Japanese kids. And Michael talks about being at this dinner and about how he didn't really say very much because he completely felt like the outsider. Like, these were people who were super cool. They knew streetwear, and he was just happy to sort of be in the space and listening. And he was really struck by Virgil, who was also in the same room and who was cooler than Burke but didn't feel the need to be the center of attention, that he had this very inviting way about him. And I felt like that scene sort of suggested a lot of different sort of strings that I needed to pull on for the book about streetwear, about sneakers, about community, about the power of all those relationships. And then there was a lot of just going back and trying to consume Virgil's really prodigious output of talks and speeches and social media. And I did not. There was no way that I could have gotten to it all, but that was a big part of it.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Who are some of the other people who you interviewed?

[Robin Gavan]

Well, there were people who were sort of in his friend circle of designers, like Matthew Williams and Heron Preston and Jerry Lorenzo. And I spoke to his parents in Rockford, Illinois, and some of his teachers at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he studied architecture. I kept it focused on his professional fashion universe.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Yeah.

[Robin Gavan]

So I didn't go down the rabbit hole into the many avenues of, like, music and things like that that he worked with. Another book that someone can write about his time as a dj. Yeah.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

And his cover art.

[Robin Gavan]

Oh, yes, the COVID art there was the one at Pharrell's debut at Vuitton where I was describing. I think it was. I think it must have been, like, a new clip song that was being played during the show. And it was just like this moment when all of these past relationships collided in that one moment on the Runway. The fact that Pusha T had been the inspiration for the name of Pyrek's vision, the fact that he had. Pharrell had produced. I mean, it was just on and on, like these layers and layers and layers. And I just thought, oh, my God, like, these guys are, like, so caught up in each other's lives.

[Nicole Phelps]

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. In the book, you acknowledge that Virgil didn't dismantle the fashion system, that he didn't invent a new fashion vocabulary. And as you said earlier, his design input was kind of uneven. What do you see as his major accomplishments and impact on fashion?

[Robin Gavan]

You know, I feel like, as a. Certainly as someone who's written about fashion for a long time, I feel like he opened up another category in which we should consider, like, the importance of or the Success of fashion. And by that, I mean, he opened up this category of sort of meaning and whether or not the clothing had meaning for people as a way to connect to a broader community. I mean, I sort of think about a lot of what he did in the context of, like, sports jerseys, and it's not really about the jersey at all. It's about the name of the team that's on the jersey. And by wearing that, it allows you to immediately sort of express an affinity, to make a connection to people that you have never met. It taps into this sort of sense of who you are and, you know, how you kind of identify. And so much of that is just steeped in the name that's on the jersey, and it's not even. So it's different from, you know, a brand. It's different from seeing Chanel or, you know, Prada on a T shirt. It. And I feel like that is an area that fashion hasn't really thought about that much and hasn't really valued that much, and I feel like there's a lot of room to explore that, and I feel like that's kind of where Virgil opened it up.

[Nicole Phelps]

Well, it raises a question about off white, the future of off white. Can off white be successful without Virgil, do you think?

[Robin Gavan]

I wish I had that crystal ball, my investment portfolio. I don't know. I really don't. I mean, I feel like in many ways, it's. It has become more of a traditional brand where the focus is on the design and on the way that the clothes look, the silhouettes of the clothes, and the color story and all of that. And so in some ways, as a brand, you know, there's part of me that feels like it. Its trajectory aesthetically has been solid. You know, it has, I think, become a more nuanced and thoughtful brand, But I don't know if it still has the same depth of meaning. And I think those two things can go hand in hand, but in this case, I don't know that they do.

[Nicole Phelps]

It's definitely a badge of cool. I think my son is the happy recipient of the T shirts that the brand gives away at its shows, and he still, you know, he treasures those. Those are the only T shirts in his closet that get hung up on a hanger. Everything else gets, you know, smushed into a drawer. So it's definitely a badge of cool. But I think your son's probably a.

[Robin Gavan]

Better authority on this than I am.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Listen, I'm not a. By no means a sneakerhead, but I grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And when those. Those Jordans came out, I was like, oh, I have to have those.

[Robin Gavan]

Yeah.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

And I wear them often, and I. I feel very cool when I do.

[Robin Gavan]

Well, you know, I had a little sneaker moment as I was reporting this, because I, too, I am not a sneaker head at all. And I would never even call my begin to call myself that now. But I was reading a lot and doing a lot of research on sneakers and looking at a lot of sneakers, and I just bought this very cute, I thought, pair of, like, Nike Cortez sneakers. Cause I thought they looked a little, like, old school and cute and all that. And I was walking my do, and this guy looks at my sneakers, and he, like, gives me this nod and goes, yeah, cool sneakers, right? I had no idea that I needed that validation.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

No, seriously, when a teenager point to my off white sneakers, I'm like, wow.

[Robin Gavan]

I got the validation. I was like, yeah. Thank you.

[Nicole Phelps]

More with Robin Gavan after the break.

[Cho Minardi]

Hi, it's Cho Minardi. If you're not on the Vogue app yet, what the hell are you doing? You can follow along with me and other editors as we talk about everything happening in fashion. Think you're already a fashion expert? Well, find out how your Runway IQ stacks up against the Vogue community with an all new Runway genius leaderboard. So download the Vogue app today, and you'll never miss a moment.

[Nicole Phelps]

Do you feel that there are designers when you look around at fashion now who have inherited, like, the mantle? The title of the book is make it Ours. Do you see other designers doing that work now, or is that work still necessary? Is there, like, a before Virgil and an after Virgil time? And maybe the job of designers is different now?

[Robin Gavan]

Oh, Nicole, that question is so complicated. I think all those things are kind of true. I mean, I wish that there was this great dividing line between before Virgil and after Virgil. And after Virgil, the doors flew wide open, and everything was, like, better. And I think that the doors opened and then they closed up, not tightly. They're still cracked open, but they're not flung wide. And so there's still a lot of work to do. I mean, I think when you look at the wave of new designer appointments and you look at who sits on the boards of the major fashion conglomerates, there's still a lot of work to do. And it's really disheartening because you know that there are these incredibly talented designers of color and women who are out there who are not rising to the top in the way that I think they should be. I thought just, you know, seeing the designers whose work was on the blue carpet at the Met Gala was a reminder, as if we needed a reminder of the amount of talent that's out there. Designers who are sort of caring. You know, I keep mentioning Sarah J O Hudson because I think he's super talented, and I don't know how he managed to dress so many people. I don't know when the man slept half the gala, but I just. I thought he was such a great example of someone who is, you know, just a terrific designer. His background, his race, his ethnic have nothing to do with the beautiful tailoring that he does. And I'm sure, you know, everyone brings their whole selves to, like, the table when they're being creative. But I just think, like, he's so good at what he does, and he could be at any house at the very top if that's something that he wanted to do. And so I feel like, yes, he is definitely making it his. But whether or not the industry is fully open to that is the big question.

[Nicole Phelps]

I think Rachel Scott of Diotima is another. Another designer who deserves recognition in that regard.

[Robin Gavan]

Yeah, exactly. And so it was really great to be able to see so many of them have the spotlight shine in such a bright way. And I just hope that it continues to shine even when the subject matter has nothing to do with identity.

[Nicole Phelps]

We'll be back with Robin Gavan in a minute.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

You're obviously known as this prolific, you know, fashion journalist and critic, but that was not your first beat you were covering Nightlife.

[Robin Gavan]

I read it. Techno.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Tell us about this. Were you outside? Were you at the club?

[Robin Gavan]

Shocking though it may be, yes. My very first job out of grad school, I went to grad school for journalism was at the Detroit Free Press. And I was in what was then called, like, the entertainment section. And the entertainment section was all of the critics who covered film, popular music, and so on. And I was the only generalist. So I'm not even quite sure. I don't know how I managed to get a job in that department. So I'm the general assignment reporter, surrounded by all these critics. They were lovely, but I felt like I was kind of getting sort of the backwash of their beats. Like, every time I had an idea, I would need to sort of check in. And so the one, I was the youngest person in the department, and on weekends and stuff, I was going out with my friends, and techno was, like, the music that was pretty much in the clubs. And I remember, I think I Sort of got to know, like, one of the DJs, just because I was like, well, we play that song. And I pitched the idea of a profile or something of this dj, and the Free Press said yes. And I sort of created this mini beat of writing about techno. And unbeknownst to me, just as I sort of started reporting, it was like this little sort of strand of music that was just growing and growing and growing. And I remember interviewing this producer, Derek May, who was one of the early founding fathers of techno. And it was an excuse to basically say on a Thursday night, well, I gotta go to the club, I gotta do some reporting. And I would drag my friends with me. I was very popular, fun.

[Nicole Phelps]

Are you still listening to techno music?

[Robin Gavan]

Not as much. Although a few years ago, I happened to be in Detroit over, I think it's Memorial Day weekend, when the big movement festival happens, and it's like a big techno extravaganza down on the river. So I felt very OG I, for.

[Nicole Phelps]

Some reason, have never put this together. But Detroit has given fashion two of its most important critics. You and Kathy Horan. Kathy Horan worked at the Detroit News.

[Robin Gavan]

Yes.

[Nicole Phelps]

Was that your competition, the Detroit Free Press versus the Detroit News?

[Robin Gavan]

It was. Yes, it was.

[Nicole Phelps]

Have you ever. Have you ever thought about this? What does Detroit have to do with luxury fashion?

[Robin Gavan]

I have no idea. I would say it probably has more to do with the state of the newspaper industry during that time, because there were all of these regional newspapers like the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun Times, multiple papers in Texas, in San Francisco, like all over the country. And they all had someone covering the fashion industry. And they didn't just sort of COVID it like where they were. I mean, these. They all went to New York to cover shows. They went to Europe. They covered New York, Milan, London and Paris. So it was. I don't. Yeah, I think it was the time. And also just like fluke.

[Nicole Phelps]

Well, I did, you know, just to respond to what you were saying, I think that the, you know, us New Yorkers and people in California do have a way of writing off the middle states. And we may not be aware of the great amount of wealth that was in. That is still in Michigan. There is sort of a way to connect that to the way that fashion, you know, especially 25 years ago or more, was this very exclusive and exclusionary industry, for sure. And, you know, I think that's something that you have touched on in your. In your writing, talking about fashion and cultural issues. Like you tell these Stories, they're not two separate things. Fashion and culture. It's all intertwined.

[Robin Gavan]

Yeah. I mean, when I. When I started, it felt like fashion was very much this sort of closed off place. But even then I realized that. And maybe because, you know, I came to it from, like, such a distance, I didn't come to it as sort of a fashion expert. I felt like it was absorbing all these aspects of, like, a broader culture. But I don't think that people really sort of recognized that until the industry started sort of seeping out into the broader universe. And in so many ways, you know, fashion at its roots is really about inside and outside, about aspiration, about the things that you feel like you can't easily have. And some of that has dissipated over the years. And it's not quite. It's not as intense. And I mean, I don't think anyone's walking around going, everyone's not important anymore. But the engine that kind of makes fashion run is still this element of, here's this brass ring and you're trying to grab it. Yeah.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

I'm curious to know if being critical is something that came naturally to you. If there's any times we've had hesitation, I feel like this moment we're in right now, in fashion journalism, at least, I feel like people are less critical. At least we're talking about journalism. I think people are very critical on social media or they'll crack jokes on Instagram. But, you know, you're invited to a designer show, you're sitting in the front row, you don't love what you see or you don't think it's good. Yeah, I'm just. I'm curious to know how you kind of embraced, like, just being, you know, critical and calling it like it is, so to speak.

[Robin Gavan]

The first time I went to Europe, my editor said to me, like, don't review, just report. Which was wonderful advice because I needed to report to better understand. Well, not even to say better to understand the industry, to get a sense of context, to have any idea of how one designer's work compared to another designer's work or compared to their work in previous seasons. So it was a while before I started critiquing, but I. And it is. It can be really intoxicating. Right. Because you don't just get invited to the show. Like, I mean, now it's a digital invitation, but, you know, at one point you were getting, like, these beautiful invitations with your name in calligraphy, asking for the pleasure of your presence, you know, at some event. And the Invitation is non transferable.

[Nicole Phelps]

Right.

[Robin Gavan]

So it's just for you.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Yeah.

[Robin Gavan]

And so there is this sense of intimacy and privilege that's attached to it. But I think you also have to, like, step back and go, this is a business. And the goal here is to sell to a broad consumer base. Broadish consumer base. And the consumer is inundated with a lot. And designers are hopefully saying something that is thoughtful and noteworthy and sort of. And valuable enough that it makes that item at least vaguely worth its cost. Yeah, noted. Made face that anything is really worth that cost, but whatever. So all of those things, I think, remind me that my job is to take this seriously as a business. And in doing so, to me, a criticism is an acknowledgement that what you're doing is important and valuable. If it weren't, it wouldn't be worth the time of even considering it in a thoughtful way. And so I feel like it's. It's an expression of respect that the work is critiqued in a serious way. And when I say serious, I mean that the critique is based on the work. It's not personal, it's not petty, it's not flippant, it's not dismissive. I mean, I don't think that it's respectful to just like, hop on social media and Diss Something in 15 words or less, because at least I couldn't explain why I think something wasn't successful in such a brief little sentence. Yeah. But it definitely can be hard because you get to know designers. The more you know about how difficult fashion is, the more you understand how hard it is for. For anyone to get a collection on a Runway. And so I try to remember that when, you know, if I'm being critical, because not just sort of physical energy, but a lot of emotional energy went into it. And I know how I feel when I get a letter from a reader dissing a column. I'm like, I worked hard on that.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Great.

[Nicole Phelps]

Yes. It's always a blow. Even if you disagree with them, it's a blow.

[Robin Gavan]

Yeah.

[Nicole Phelps]

Yeah. I wanted to end by asking if you, you know, this idea of criticism, if you were able ever to talk to Virgil about your feelings about his work and, you know, what kind of communication you had about that.

[Robin Gavan]

You know, I would say that, you know, my relationship with him was very much professional, arm's distance.

[Nicole Phelps]

And.

[Robin Gavan]

And so I did not talk to him about the criticism, but his response to it was. And I don't know, maybe this was a very Virgil way to do it was just sort of.

[Alice]

Oh.

[Robin Gavan]

And sometimes she hasn't liked my work, but whatever. And just sort of moved on with it. I mean, I guess the best way to describe it is to say that he recognized that it was part of this, was how the industry worked. And if he was going to be a part of the industry and be successful in the industry, then he was going to have to be okay with that part of it. And he wasn't in it to upend it or turn over any tables. Now, his friend Kanye had a different take on it, but, yeah, I mean, Virgil's take was very much. This is how it works.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Yeah.

[Nicole Phelps]

What do you think Virgil would be up to now if he sadly hadn't passed so early?

[Robin Gavan]

Oh, gosh. You know, that is something I'm not sure I've asked myself that question a lot because I felt like, as during COVID and after George Floyd's murder and during the Black Lives Matters protest, I felt like Virgil's work became much more nuanced and thoughtful and complex. And I think he recognized the complexity of being a black man of prominence in that moment. And that what you say has incredible resonance and that it was a moment when people did not have a lot of patience for a measured approach, which was sort of his natural way of being. And so I am so curious to know, like, how his work might have evolved and how he might have evolved as a public figure at a moment now when, you know, DEI is considered sort of a bad word, when woke is derogatory, when so many people who look like him, you know, many people are just sort of trying to erase from history. And I would love to see, like, what he would say and how he would respond. And I'm curious to know if. If the person who said, I'm not a rebel would have become more of a rebel.

[Nicole Phelps]

Someone in the book says fashion needs more Virgils, and I think you quoted someone saying that. And I think we still do agree.

[Robin Gavan]

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

[Nicole Phelps]

Thank you, Robin.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Thank you so much.

[Robin Gavan]

Thank you so much for having me. It was so much fun to talk to you guys.

[Nicole Phelps]

Yes, likewise.

[Leah Fay Cooper]

Congratulations on the book.

[Robin Gavan]

Thanks.

[Nicole Phelps]

That's it for the Run Through. See you next week.

[Alice]

The Run through is produced by Chelsea Daniel, Alex DePalma and Joanna Solotarov. It's engineered by Jake Loomis and James Yost. It is made by Mike Kutchman. Stephanie Karaoke is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of.

[Robin Gavan]

Global audio from prx.