Quotes by Virgil Abloh

I'm constantly inspired by my friends and the people I surround myself with and the cities that I'm traveling to.

My style is to never say no.

I suck at sleeping.

The best New Year's resolution I ever made was probably to, like, pursue fashion in the spirit that I have now.

Big teams are absolutely vital if you want to achieve certain results when you're working on larger scales, both in terms of physical size and productive quantities.

For me, there's a subtlety in focusing on the right shape of T-shirt and pant. I recognise that it's boring, but the idea is to catch people off-guard and reward them in some valuable way.

The amount of random conversations that lead to culture-shifting ideas is insane.

I always live in multiple places. I'm never in the same city for seven days.

I'm mostly into buying art from friends. I like to keep it vague -- just whatever I find intriguing.

There's a part of me that's trying to represent kids that don't necessarily have the same outlet that I have. I'm not looking towards a new demographic. I'm looking towards the demographic I came from.

I hate being up onstage with a microphone.

Kanye looks for the best in everything.

Kanye's the best. He really, really is. He's cool. And why we've always gotten along is because we can just sit down and talk about art.

I want to put culture on a track so that it becomes more inclusive, more open source.

For me, just as a social recorder of 2016, there's a new girl that emerged that can shop in between Zara and designer and still maintain a sense of her personality and identity.

I can come up with 30 T-shirt designs in a day, but it's just about where to slot each of them. That's streetwear to me. It's about knowing where to buy things, not this mass thing you can get anywhere.

My general premise is not about selling clothes. If that's your end goal, then all of a sudden everything looks the same, you know -- you start designing by numbers.

I don't do the vintage thing so much, just because it's not me. There are some vintage designers I'll buy things from, but mostly not.

From my perspective, I'm trying to stand for a generation. You know, each generation has designers who go along with it.

Criticism doesn't worry me.

I'm always trying to prove to my 17-year-old self that I can do creative things I thought weren't possible.

People that are able to think in terms of concepts and offer us valuable forms of art are very exciting to me.

The fashion consumer likes a high-low mix -- I want to be a brand that represents that.

There's no line between a designer and consumer.

For me, as I was growing up, I studied architecture, I was into music, and I always felt that there was a gap between the things that I loved and consumed and who made them and how they made them.

I was never meant to, like, work and then turn it off and sit on the couch. I just have a vision, and I'm inspired by it. It's sort of what makes me tick.

Clothing interests me, but it's not the endpoint of my interest.

I pride myself in collaborating and being a creative director, and creative direction isn't putting my opinion first. It's supporting an artist so they get the most out of the project.

Collaboration is not a punchline... I only collaborate with the best in each category.

I don't want to be a celebrity designer. I want to keep my personal life out of it.

For me, I analyze the modern girl, the girl that I'm friends with, and they're empowered: They pay their own bills. They have their own style. They wear clothes -- the clothes don't wear them.

You can look at Lil Uzi and know he has a strong opinion about his aesthetic.

I don't have the patience to be a non-creator.

Murakami's ability to deconstruct and his aesthetic and conceptual freedom have been totally inspiring for me.

'Creative director' is a catchall phrase for giving ideas. To me, it obviously means more than that. It's like being a counselor.

I just wanna start a brand that inspires and is geared towards youth.

What I love about tennis is the gracefulness. It's an aggressive and powerful game, but it takes touch and finesse.

Art is made in hindsight.

My dad is a Ghanaian immigrant, and he wanted a son who was an engineer.

Ironic things are interesting.

I do fashion to tell a narrative.

People, when they say 'streetwear,' they miss the central component, which is that it's real people; it's clothes that are worn on the street.

Everything I do references something that influenced me.

DJing is like a great tasteful art form.

Music needs a visual element to make it tangible. So, naturally, there's gonna be a synergy between high-level art direction and high-level albums.

I always joke that, at any given time, I'm supposed to be at two other places.

Growing up, at high school, we all used to wear Champion garments, which, in America, are standard-issue gym uniforms.

The whole point of collaboration is that you give and take from each other, and that's how you create things that are totally new.

To me, graphic T-shirts are the most important and most expressive format for a designer or a person. Your taste in graphic tees says a lot about your point of view.

As a young designer in tune with culture, I'm interested in the lifeline of trends.

All I do all day is think of ideas and implement them. That's an industry, you know. I'm trying to make art on a commercial scale.

The most important message is to let me just focus on making the most beautiful normcore clothes, but as luxurious as possible.

My graphic design skills are superior to a lot of other things I can do; I use it as a part of my tool kit.

I believe in the romantic interchange between intellectuals about fashion.

I'm fascinated by the idea that a human connection can be triggered through inanimate devices.

I think that, in a digital age, album covers are becoming a lost art.

I have this overriding principle that streetwear could end up like disco: that it will be perceived well at the time but doesn't age well at all.

I interned at Fendi while Michael Burke was overseeing Fendi.

If you look at why people become wack as they get older, it's because they stop doing the things they did that were formative to their work. You can't mentally stay still. You can't not challenge yourself.

I think the reason why Off-White exists is to modernize fashion.

My motivation is, in part, a bit of angst that comes from feeling like I don't belong, that our generation doesn't belong.

I oftentimes say that I design my collections off my phone. I'm in a group chat with my team in Milan. I copy and paste. I draw. I look at trends. I don't really have an assistant. It's a modern way of working. I don't know if it's sustainable, but it's how I do it.

My goal was to tell a dialogue between high fashion and streetwear. So, the name Off-White, in my mind, is between black and white. So, that middle ground is a mixture between both genres of fashion.

Every idea that comes to mind I execute, or I look for outlets to put out ideas.

I don't sleep as much as normal people do.

It is an honor for me to accept the position of men's artistic director for Louis Vuitton. I find the heritage and creative integrity of the house are key inspirations and will look to reference them both while drawing parallels to modern times.

I'm a kid from Chicago. I know what it was like to see Obama become president. We felt the tectonic plates of the world shift.

I don't play golf.

I've always had this in some ways pessimistic and in some ways realistic idea that I'm the lowest rung on the ladder.

My first degree was in structural engineering, which is super-boring.

The blue-collar culture, it's not really a buttoned-up aesthetic. It's a heavy-labor thing because you're, like, sweating.

The most valuable thing in culture is to find something first -- so everyone is always looking.

I don't come up with ideas in a test tube; I come up with ideas by breaking test tubes. That's how I've always been.

I'd do anything at the right time, and I would also do things at the wrong time if they felt right.

My place in design history is to sort of interpret youth culture, and I think we've seen that done in fashion before -- it's not a new concept -- but it hasn't been done with the same vigour in a modern context.

In my case, everything starts from Marcel Duchamp and the new expressive possibilities he gave us with his ready-mades. I transferred his artistic language into today's world, choosing, for example, to use pedestrian-crossing stripes as a symbol.

All the skateboarding brands that I was into had graphic T-shirts. In the '90s, there were different styles that went along with the different influences in skateboarding, whether that be hip-hop or rock and roll and grunge. And that's what I was into, so I was following all that.

From a very young age, as a teenager, I was into hip-hop and skateboarding and all those things that were akin to a kid in the '90s. All those things are what resulted in clothes.

The concept with Off-White is that I have no ideal target. It's more about trying to make something for everyone. And I think that's what helps make it unique. That there isn't a specific muse.

I'm not really into style. I'm more into confidence or having something to say.

DJing is my only peace of mind. When the phone is off, I play my favourite songs really loud for myself, and I'm not talking to anyone; I'm not managing anything. It's just, like, a time when I can listen to music.

Fashion is kinda a joke. I don't get too bogged down in the clothes. For me, it's one big art project, just a canvas to show that fashion should have a brand which has someone behind it who cares about different contexts. Social things.

I don't have to choose between high fashion or streetwear. My brand reminds me that it doesn't have to fit in a box. It can just be in a gray area.

Graphic tees are vibes. And I think they're the basis of a lot of wardrobes, but that makes it challenging to distill what you're brand means within a T-shirt.

When creativity melds together with global issues, I believe you can bring the world together.

Fashion and music are two great artistic forms that can be molded by the youth culture -- our taste and our passion for evolving things in our limited time on earth allows us to look at things with fresh eyes.