If, 3 days ago, you told me that Virgil Abloh would pass away unexpectedly within the next two days, I almost feel like I would have been ambivalent about it…it’s just not something that I would have thought I could have afforded much energy to.
With the Kobe thing, it was that he was a larger-than-life personality who happened to grow up in the public eye. We went through similar ‘growing up’ stages at similar times, so a lot of what I see in me, I saw in Kobe first. (Obviously minus one-of-the top-basketball-players-of-all-time thing.) I looked at how he acted in certain situations and it gave me some guidance. So when he died it felt like an honest to goodness friend had died. It hit me hard.
With Virgil, this is hitting me in really unexpected ways…like I couldn’t sleep last night. And being a father, of course. But I think this one is hitting me because this dude was really one of us. As fans of a culture, we like to put people into buckets - ‘this guy gets it’, ‘this guy doesn’t get it’, etc. But this man was really one of those guys who loved it from the ground up…From all the childhood pics to his stories about MJ and Chicago and what he liked and didn’t like about the shoes - I could picture him obsessing about this stuff far too much just like the rest of us. But he did something about it. I could picture him on NT. And what he did a couple of months ago - jumping in the comments on IG with guys like @goodbirger and @scollard23 basically saying ‘hey I see you’ - that’s something a really real one would do.
He had his vision of our (sneaker) world and he attacked it. And, my god, this dude flipped this whole thing on it’s head - I know I’ve been semi-vocal and whiny about what Virgil brought to the sneaker world (I never though the majority of what he created was good for outdoor activities) but there is no doubt that this dudes impact will impact *everything* going forward. Amazing.
Rest In Peace, bro.