FEATURE
Maybe it’s because of his 3% rule: never taking a design more than 3% from its original form. He doesn’t have to—he’s fine with leaving a design the way it is and has a healthy respect for the beauty of something in its pure form. Much in the same vein, we don’t need to fit his story into some grand-notion journalistic endeavor—his story tells itself, and we’re simply taking our due turn in being the assistant.
washed Off-White™ jeans and his own Nike AF-1 collaborative sneakers throughout. As I followed him from location to location across New York City, I also observed that he was at the same time always present, but never truly there. Constantly splitting his attention between his iPhone and what was in front of him, Virgil acted—and reacted—as if teetering upon this fine line of existence. He was at once, conscious of the task/project at hand and the (very storied) players involved, but also detached from the reality of the situation. I realized this served as an advantage to Virgil and his work because he could not overanalyze the situation, and this exemplifies his entire design ethos.
With that said, let me share with you my experience with Virgil. The day I spent with him, in November, the tail end of his absolutely breakout 2017 year, was a jampacked one. It was the only day he was going to be in NYC, and the day consisted of two separate location photoshoots, a private gallery visit, a bookstore visit, and a concert, which he DJ’ed. Virgil had just arrived at JFK that morning and was scheduled to leave the following afternoon—a quick peek at his IG stories and you can catch that this may be the most traveled man in the world at the moment—with his design studio in Paris, his “home” in Chicago, and his Off-White™ flagship stores in Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York and Singapore. He travels so much, he has plans to create an installation that shows his flights just in 2017, via a red string on a map—“All you’d see is red.” We cycled through a range of different social settings, that otherwise may have begged for a change in attire, Virgil donned the same Supreme white tee,
At his Harvard lecture, he explained his “3% approach,” alongside his method of completing just 70% of his projects before moving to the next project, allowing him to work on a million projects at once. Throughout the day, I watch Virgil come in and out of engagement with photographers, stylists, PR people, gallerist, friends, myself, so on and so forth. Each time I asked Virgil a question, he’d listen, acknowledge and respond to it, while concurrently carrying on his separate conversation on WhatsApp. While this may seem to be counterintuitive to many, and borderline offensive to some, nothing can be said of Virgil’s actions because he always delivers, in every single situation—whether it be his collaborations with Jimmy Choo or his collection in conjunction with IKEA—something truly unique and yet universally praised almost always comes from it.
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