ALASKA ALASKA BLACK FURNITURE MENTORSHIP
GHANA SKATE PARK
Designing a Skate Park
DESIGNER YARD SALE
Raised 8,100 for a Ikea Chair donated
VIRGIL ABLOH LEGAL ASSISTANCE
Providing Legal help via. Virgil Abloh's Legal Counsels to the “In the black” black fashion designers industry group
VIRGIL ABLOH "OFFICE HOURS"
Immediate fashion business mentoring leader to the “In the black” black fashion designers industry group.
BLACK CURRICULUM
Head Ambassador to raise awareness and funds for charity donations for Black Education.
MENTORING AND LECTURING INITIATIVE
Continuation of mentoring and Lecturing Programs.
VOTER REGISTRATION ART DIRECTION
VOTER REGISTRATION INITATIVE x FASHION INDUSTRY WORKING CAMPAIGN: We design what you wear, You decide how we live Together, we can VOTE to Fashion Our Future
#VoteToFashionOurFuture
MOCA FACEMASK
MOCA will commission renowned artists to create a design for a mask to benefit MOCA. 100% of proceeds will support MOCA during the global pandemic.
THE “LVMH BLACK DATABASE”
Database of black talent that LVMH companies can work with.
LVMH DIVERSITY PANEL
An initiative to highlight diversity in the LVMH umbrella with the goal to increase diversity within the portfolio.
SOFT BANK 100 MILLION FUND
A fund for entrepreneurs who are diverse (people of color).
OFF-WHITE™️ I SUPPORT YOUNG BLACK BUSINESSES TEE
An initiative to highlight young black businesses via. the Off-White™️ channels.
DSM’S FEARLESS INITIATIVE FOR POSITIVE IMAGINATION AND INSPIRATIONAL SOLIDARITY
Looking to the future with optimism and hope, and working on a project to spread positive energy and positive affirmations together with friends of DSM and the wider DSM global community.
SNAPCHAT MASKS FILTER
Help push the importance of wearing masks globally. An opportunity to partner with Partner in Health, asking for their patrons/users to give back to the charity in addition. The organization Partner in Health’s goals are “to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair.
OFF-WHITE MASKS PROJECT
Creation of a multitude of masks to help fight the spread of COVID 19. Distributed to the black community in Milan.
DGK COLLABORATION
Releasing August 1st 2020, this will be a skateboard collaboration with Stevie Williams.
NIKE OFF-WHITE™️ BLACK SKATE PROGRAM
A collective of Black Skateboarders who are the face of future to be released Nike Off-White™️ Rubber Dunks
AHMAUD ARBERY SONG WITH LUPE FIASCO 2020
Spoken word poem piece ~ of a description of what an “Air Ahmaud” would look like. Part of a 3 piece hook.
NIKE OFF-WHITE™️ PROTÉGÉ STUDIO “BLACKBOARD”
Will be designed with a infrastructure where the mentee will be placed in a newly created executive design program, where they will move up the company until they are at the director level. Therefore increasing the amount of underrepresented ethnic groups in the top management level.
Nikelab Chicago Activations
Little Sun Foundation (Solar Power)
MCA Retail - Chicago Local Printer Jay Green
LOUIS VUITTON SS20 MANNEQUIN SCULPTURES
LOUIS VUITTON SS20 CASTING
LOUIS VUITTON SS20 CAMPAIGN / ADVERTISING
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE “AFFIRMATIVE ACTION,” 2015 Creative direction by Virgil Abloh Ink-jet print
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE “BORDER CONTROL,” 2018 Creative direction by Virgil Abloh Ink-jet print
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE - Off-White c/o Virgil AblohTM “SCULPTURE” Cotton Bag, 2018 Creative direction by Virgil Abloh. Ink-jet print
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE - Campaign images for Louis Vuitton Men’s Collection Spring/Summer 2019 (“Dark Side of the Rainbow”), 2019 - Creative direction by Virgil Abloh. Ink-jet prints
For his first Louis Vuitton advertising campaign, Abloh decided to focus on the theme of boyhood—not fashion or menswear. The opening chapter of the campaign, shot by the Dutch photography duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, debuted on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2019, and features a three-year-old model posing as the Statue of Liberty. The campaign asserts Abloh’s belief that children of color will take center stage in the future of luxury fashion.
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE Louis Vuitton Ideation Studio - Mannequins for Louis Vuitton Men’s Collection Spring/Summer 2019 (“Dark Side of the Rainbow”), 2018. Creative direction by Virgil Abloh Green foam
For his first season debut at Louis Vuitton, Abloh presented a boldly colorful collection on a rainbow-hued runway at the Tuileries Garden in Paris. The show featured an unprecedented number of models of color. These monochromatic mannequins are based on actual models from the show and have since appeared in Louis Vuitton stores around the world. They attest to Abloh’s commitment to representing diversity in all shades.
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE Cotton, 2019 Acrylic on canvas
This painting re-creates the logo of Cotton Incorporated, an American lobbying group established in 1970 to promote cotton as the fabric of choice for manufacturers and consumers around the globe. Abloh enlarged the logo to the scale of a billboard advertisement, highlighting the organization’s role in telling and selling a positive story of cotton, which hides the crop’s historical connection to slavery in the United States.
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE ROOM“OPTIONS,” 2019 Flocked mild steel markers
The sixteen markers on the floor of this gallery are meant to replicate those used to identify evidence at a crime scene. Sixteen represents the number of times a Chicago police officer fired at seventeen- year-old Laquan McDonald when he fatally shot him in 2014. Coming from Chicago, a city familiar with gun violence, Abloh asks viewers to choose a path of creativity over one of brutality.
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE ROOM You’re Obviously in the Wrong Place, 2015/19 Neon sign
This neon sign welcomed attendees to the Off-White Women’s Collection Fall/Winter 2016 runway show. It takes a line from the film Pretty Woman (1990), when a snobbish saleswoman at a high-end clothing store dismisses the story’s protagonist. According to Abloh, the statement serves as a “manifesto on how the modern girl doesn’t really work on convention.” The phrase also comments on Abloh’s journey into the predominantly white world of high fashion.
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE ROOM SCREEN SHOT, 2017, PRINTED 2019. Epson fine art print face-mounted with Diasec to acrylic on aluminum panel
Throughout his career, Abloh has cultivated close relationships with black cultural producers who act by turns as mentors and collaborators. For this work, the artist Arthur Jafa acquired a screen grab of Abloh FaceTiming his friend the rapper Theophilus London, presenting an expanding network of peers and collaborators.
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE ROOM “AS IMPOSSIBLE,” 2019 Blue foam
“AS IMPOSSIBLE” is one of Abloh’s latest forays into sculpture. While the adjacent work “OPTIONS” represents the struggles of black people, “AS IMPOSSIBLE” refers to the triumphs. Abloh began his fashion ca-reer by promoting his own brands, Pyrex Vision and Off-White, and over the course of six short years he became the head of one of the preeminent fashion houses in Paris. This fragile work cannot be climbed, but it serves as a symbol of the artist’s improb-able rise in the fashion design industry.
MCA "FIGURES OF SPEECH" BLACK GAZE ROOM
“Black Gaze”
With the 2013 launch of Off-White in Milan, Abloh challenged the elite fashion industry’s long-standing exclusion of black talent. Abloh marketed Off-White prominently on social media, appealing to a younger, more diverse generation of consumers. Off-White campaigns have celebrated black artists, athletes, and musicians, providing a platform and affirming their identity as creators in their own right. In 2018, Abloh assumed the role of Men’s Artistic Director at Louis Vuitton, becoming one of the few black designers to helm a major Parisian fashion house. He now uses his high- profile platform to forge a more inclusive vision for high fashion. This section presents Abloh’s fashion and artworks that reflect on black cultural experiences in the United States.
LOUIS VUITTON FW19 MANNEQUIN SCULPTURES
LOUIS VUITTON FW19 CASTING
LOUIS VUITTON FW19 CAMPAIGN / ADVERTISING
Nike Boylan Catholic High School
Virgil Abloh gifted The Boylan Catholic Titan’s one-of-a-kind kits (This was his alma mater)
Equinox Funding of Cancer Research
Worked with Equinox to put up garments (“the Scrubs Sweatsuit,” inspired by the surgical scrubs worn by oncologists at Memorial Sloan Kettering) for auction, with proceeds going to Cycle for Survival—a movement to beat rare cancer.
Melting Passes at Off-White Show
Invited the Melting Passes (Refugee Soccer team to their first fashion show)
LOUIS VUITTON SS19 MANNEQUIN SCULPTURES
LOUIS VUITTON SS19 CASTING
LOUIS VUITTON SS19 CAMPAIGN / ADVERTISING
Social Studies
Social Studies is a three-day education and retail pop-up experience exclusively developed by Baque Creative. Following the success of Social Studies Miami Art Basel 2017, the experiential event will make its proud second edition and New York debut at Milk Studios in New York City.
Committing to the ethos of New York City’s eclectic and diverse populous, Social Studies New York will host a series of educational programs and curatorial workshops with the goal of enriching and uplifting people of all walks of life. Workshops will be lead by Angelo Baque of Awake NY, Photographer Shaniqwa Jarvis, Melody Ehsani, Tremaine Emory of No Vacancy Inn, Sonya Sombreuil of Come Tees, Jess and Brian Procell of Procell, Brendan Fowler of Some Ware and ELECTION REFORM!, and Carlton Yaito. Bringing the event’s scholastic theme to life, these workshops will be aimed at a youth demographic, offering them skills guidance and the opportunity to create and develop their own bespoke creative edition.
2018 Architectural Association School of Architecture
Process, Sequence, City
To imagine the future is to live in the moment: alternating between the collective and the personal this studio uses play to explore process, sequence and the prospective city. By means of experiential fragments, on-site models and code, this course will encourage a work-in-progress culture and a reinvention of the 1:1. To fully understand something we need to build it ourselves.
As the cultural theorist J. Huizinga outlined in his seminal book “Homo Ludens” (1938), play embodies freedom and has the extraordinary capacity to exist beyond everyday life. Yet at the same time the arena, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis-court, the court of justice are all in form and function playgrounds. The studio will step in and out of the magic circle using play as our medium to speculate about the future city and the lives we will lead. Play is never just play.
We challenge the notion that play is superfluous, that instead it lies at the very heart of invention and change. The order intrinsic to play gives it an aesthetic dimension we will formalise, experience and narrate. Play is beautiful.
Each project throughout the year will address 3 issues: Play, Structure and the 1:1.
2018 Louis Vuitton Fall-Winter 2019 Precollection (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired)
Transcending cultures and national boundaries, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is an inspiration for the people of the planet. As Virgil Abloh, an African-American, settles into his role as artistic director at the venerable French House of Louis Vuitton, King’s message represents a powerful statement of what brings us together.
Today, the men’s Fall-Winter 2019 Precollection reinterprets that message on a selection of menswear creations. By reinterpreting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words as impactful graphic motifs, these exclusive pieces are a celebration of his timeless call for freedom..
Princess Diana British Lung Foundation
Inspired by Princess Diana, Part of a series of special T-shirts, where the proceeds will be donated to the British Lung Foundation.
Princess Diana American Red Cross
Inspired by Princess Diana, Part of a series of special T-shirts, where the proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross.
Nike Global The Ten Activations
Curated Designer Workshops + Lectures in tandem with the "TEN COLLECTION" in New York, London, and Paris
Nike Equality Campaign
Created a T-shirt with Nike for a “Equality” campaign, which was a project that promoted the belief that respect and equality should be seen on and off the playing field.
FAMILY (Warchild)
Contributed a graphic tee with all proceeds going to the War Child charity — a non-governmental organization founded in the UK in 1993 which provides assistance to children in areas experiencing conflict and the aftermath of conflict.
Melting Passes (Nike Soccer kits for refugees)
Collaborated with Vogue and Nike to create Nike Soccer Kits for African Refugees in France.
Virgil Abloh x Jenny Holzer (Planned Parenthood)
Three limited edition T-shirts via. a collaboration between Jenny Holzer and Virgil Abloh were sold to benefit Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.
Chicago CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny collective)
Creation of a fashion program for at-risk Chicago Youth. Provided support to South-Side Chicago youth in order for them to obtain employment, with the goal of being able toeconomically be self reliant.
NYCB Three American Pieces, costumes by Virgil Abloh of Off-White™
Social Studies
Established by Baque Creative, Shaniqwa Jarvis and Something Special Studios, Social Studies was launched during Miami Art Basel 2017. The three-day, experiential event was created to empower and educate youth through creative, community-driven programming supported by brand and artist engagement. Occupying a multi-use space within Miami’s Design District, Social Studies served as a hub of culture and information, where each creative partner’s space was decorated to reflect one subject domain from American high school. In addition to pop-ups from brands such as 032c, Union, Awake, Some Ware, and No Vacancy Inn, Social Studies featured a book launch by Shaniqwa Jarvis and a series of educational programs and curatorial workshops led by Angelo Baque, Virgil Abloh, Chris Gibbs of Union Los Angeles, Tremaine Emory and Acyde of No Vacancy Inn, Cali Dewitt, Online Ceramics, Heron Preston, and more.
Black Owned Project with Cali Dewitt
