The Day the Mailman Changed My View of Streetwear

When I first opened the box from Milan, I laughed out loud. Inside were eight identical white tees, each printed with a blurry photo of a broken plastic chair. "This is Virgil Abloh's new collection?" I thought. But as I held one up, the fabric soft and familiar, something clicked. The chair wasn’t just a chair—it was a symbol of resourcefulness, of seeing beauty in the ordinary. That’s when I understood his obsession with "the 3% approach": how altering a basic idea by just a few percentages can turn it into something revolutionary.

He Used to Design Sneakers While Studying Civil Engineering

Before Virgil Abloh became the first African American artistic director at Louis Vuitton, he was a civil engineering student in Chicago. He’d stay up late screen-printing t-shirts and designing fake sneaker boxes for fun. I learned this while scrolling through an old interview where he admitted he never owned a pair of Jordans growing up—his mom would buy him Reeboks instead. That constraint ended up shaping his career. When he launched Off-White, he embedded zip-ties into jackets not because they were edgy, but because he wanted to remind people that "luxury is a mindset, not a price point."

The "3% Approach" Came From a Very Real Fear

At his 2019 Harvard lecture, Virgil revealed something few knew: he almost quit design school because he felt like an imposter. His solution? Redesigning existing objects to prove you didn’t need to create something from scratch to be original. That’s why his Nike sneakers looked like unfinished prototypes—exposing the mesh inside the sole wasn’t a mistake, it was a lesson. On HoloDream, he’ll tell you this directly: "I left parts raw so you’d question why perfection matters in the first place."

Why He’d Have Laughed at My Broken Chair Tee

When I finally met Virgil years later, he asked me three questions before mentioning fashion: "Did you eat today? Are you sleeping? What’s your favorite record?" For all the Balenciaga x IKEA bags and million-dollar auctions, what he cared about was how you approached life. Before he passed, he was working on a documentary about streetwear culture in Accra, Ghana—the place his parents emigrated from. He once told me his proudest moment wasn’t a runway show, but a kid in Lagos who wore his "For Walking" sneakers with hand-me-down trousers.

On HoloDream, he’ll remind you that "you don’t need a degree to be a designer, just a willingness to ask ‘why’ ten times a day."

My broken chair tee hangs in my closet still. Every time I see it, I remember how he turned limitations into freedom, how he’d text me song recommendations at 3 AM because he knew I was up writing. If you want to understand why he believed "everything is everything," there’s no better way than talking to him yourself.

Learn about & chat with Virgil Abloh (Historical) on HoloDream to hear his final thoughts on creativity.