Virgil Abloh

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

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.

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.

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 started off as a kid who didn't care what my education was.

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

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

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

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 want Off-White to be a graphics-based brand.

Kanye looks for the best in everything.

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.

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.

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

DJing is like a great tasteful art form.

I've been DJing since I was in high school.

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

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

My lifestyle doesn't really account for movies. I can't even remember what I last saw.

I try to talk on the phone as little as possible.

I like to look at fashion and relate it to the time when it was happening.

I look at culture, and I see what the kids around me are wearing, and I see a particular style. I understand the space between fashion and streetwear.

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 think my original ambition was to be an artist.

I believe in the romantic interchange between intellectuals about fashion.

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

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

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

Take Tom Sachs as an artist. His brain is more brilliant than anything, so of course, anything he puts out over a ten-year period is going to continue to be super relevant. But if you look at some artists, they have one good idea, but unless you know where it's coming from, it's not going to be lasting.

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

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.

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

My friends and me, we're the type that don't care. We're not into fashion. That's, like, millennial spirit.

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.

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.

My style is to never say no.

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.

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

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

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

I suck at sleeping.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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