The night I fell off the wagon with a crash... and why NOT drinking made me so anxious: ANTONIA HOYLE
Wearing a sequined hat I'd swiped from the singer's microphone stand, I spun around the dance floor to Bryan Adams' Summer of 69.
I requested this song, and it seemed to be popular, because people were flocking to join me. I felt like a trendsetter, a rock star – practically as important as the band!
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The Independent
40 minutes ago
- The Independent
Q&A: Pulitzer Prize winner Robin Givhan chronicles Virgil Abloh's rise to fashion fame
With his calm and cool demeanor, fashion disruptor and multi-hyphenate Virgil Abloh artfully challenged the fashion industry's traditions to leave his mark as a Black creative, despite his short-lived career. In the years since his 2021 death at just 41, his vision and image still linger. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robin Givhan sheds new light on how Abloh ascended the ranks of one of the top luxury fashion houses and captivated the masses with her latest book, 'Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh.' In the book out Tuesday, Givhan documents Abloh's early life growing up as the son of Ghanaian immigrants in Rockford, Illinois, his days as graduate student studying architecture and his working relationship and friendship with Kanye West. Before taking the helm of Louis Vuitton as the house's first Black menswear creative director, Abloh threw himself into his creative pursuits including fine art, architecture, DJing and design. Abloh remixed his interests with his marketing genius and channeled it into fashion with streetwear labels like Been Trill and Pyrex Vision. These endeavors were the launchpad for his luxury streetwear label Off-White, known for its white diagonal lines, quotation marks, red zip ties and clean typeface. Off-White led to Abloh's collaboration with Ikea, where he designed a rug with 'KEEP OFF' in all-white letters and also with Nike where he deconstructed and reenvisioned 10 of Nike's famous shoe silhouettes. Throughout his ventures, Abloh built a following of sneakerheads and so-called hypebeasts who liked his posts, bought into his brands and showed up in droves outside his fashion shows. Social media made Abloh accessible to his fans and he tapped into that. Off-White had built a loyal following and some critics. Givhan, a Washington Post senior critic-at-large, openly admits that she was among the latter early on. Givhan said she was fascinated that Abloh's popularity was more than his fashion. 'For me, there was something of a disconnect really,' she said. 'That here was this person who had clearly had an enormous impact within the fashion industry and outside of the fashion industry, and yet it wasn't really about the clothing. It was about something else.' For her latest project, Givhan spoke with The Associated Press on how she approached each of Abloh's creative undertakings and his legacy during a period of heightened racial tension in America. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. AP: Tell me why you felt it was important to include the context of what was happening at the time Abloh was growing up as well as on his rise up through the fashion industry, with him ultimately ending up at Louis Vuitton. GIVHAN: Fashion doesn't just sort of happen in a vacuum. People are the product of their parents, their family, their environment, their timing, their interests, all of those things. I always like to see, what is swirling around people when they make certain decisions? What is sort of in the water that you're absorbing, that you are not even conscious that you're absorbing it. AP: Can you talk about the process of writing about all of his creative endeavors and how they shaped his career? GIVHAN: The skater culture — in part because it was such a sort of subculture that also had a very specific aesthetic and was such a deep part of the whole world of streetwear — and then the DJing part intrigued me because so much of his work as a designer seems to reflect a kind of DJ ethos, where you're not creating the melody and you're not creating the lyrics. You're taking these things that already exist and you're remixing them and you're responding to the crowd and the crowd is informing you. And so much of that, to me, could also be used to describe the way that he thought about fashion and the way that he designed. AP: What role would you say that Virgil has had in the fashion industry today? GIVHAN: He certainly raised the question within the industry of what is the role of the creative director? How much more expansive is that role? ... And I do think he has really forced the question of how are we defining luxury? Like what is a luxury brand? And is it something that is meant to sort of have this lasting impact? Is it supposed to be this beautifully crafted item? Or is it really just a way of thinking about value and beauty and desirability? And if it's those things, then really it becomes something that is quite sort of quite personal and can be quite based on the community in which you live. AP: How did he use social media to his advantage and to help catapult his career? GIVHAN: He really used social media as a way of connecting with people as opposed to just sort of using it as kind of a one-way broadcast. He was telling his side of things, but he was also listening to other people. He was listening to that feedback. That's also what made him this larger-than-life person for a lot of people, because not only was he this creative person who was in conversation with fans and contemporaries, but he was this creative person inside. He was this creative person at the very top of the fashion industry. For a lot of people, the idea that you could ostensibly have a conversation with someone at that level, and they would seemingly pull back the curtain and be transparent about things — that was really quite powerful. AP: You write about his relationship to Kanye in the book. Were you able to get any input from him on their relationship for the book? GIVHAN: Their individual ambitions, aesthetic ideas and curiosity kind of propelled them forward in separate directions. I did reach out to Kanye after a lot of the reporting because he obviously is this thread that is woven throughout the book. And, ultimately, he elected not to engage. But I was lucky enough to get access to an unpublished conversation that Virgil had had around, I think it was 2016-ish, where he talked at length about his working relationship with Kanye and sort of the differences between them and the similarities and the ways in which ... Kanye inspired him and sort of the jet fuel that he got from that relationship. More than anything, because Virgil's personality was in so many ways kind of the opposite of Kanye's, that for every door that Kanye was kind of pounding on, Virgil was able to politely sort of walk through. AP: Why do you think his legacy continues to persist? GIVHAN: For one, he had such an enormous output of work. I think there's a lot of it to consider. Also, sadly, because his career was cut so short that there is this sense of someone who sort of stops speaking mid-sentence. I've been thinking about how Virgil might have responded, how his creativity might have responded to this moment because so much shifted post-George Floyd that like this is another inflection point and it makes me wonder, 'OK, how would he have responded today?' And with the person who said, 'I'm not a rebel and I'm not a flame thrower,' would he have picked up some matches? I don't know.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Eagles QB Jalen Hurts writes football-based children's book
June 23 - Super Bowl-winning quarterback Jalen Hurts is releasing a children's book next year. Hurts announced the new work on social media on Monday, posting a photo of the cover on X. It's called "Better Than a Touchdown" and is set to be released March 10. According to a synopsis of the book posted to "Better Than a Touchdown" is "an empowering story about friendship, the power of teamwork, and achieving goals together." The book was illustrated by Canadian artist Nneka Myers. Hurts, 26, is a two-time Pro Bowl selection. He led the Philadelphia Eagles to a 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX in February. --Field Level Media
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Ellen DeGeneres slammed by comic icon who says 'creepy and weird' talk-show star was 'not nice' to them
A veteran comedian is weighing in on their interactions with Ellen DeGeneres in an unfiltered and unflattering account. Ellen was a titan of daytime TV for nearly two decades before her talk show ended in 2022 amid a torrent of allegations about its 'toxic' work environment. The 67-year-old Presidential Medal of Freedom winner has since maintained that she was 'kicked out of show business' for being 'mean.' Now Ellen, whose public persona was founded on her image as the 'Queen of Nice,' has seen her kindness brought into question yet again, this time by the comedian Margaret Cho. 'Ellen was like really weird and not nice to me for most of my career,' Margaret, 56, alleged during an appearance on The Kelly Mantle Show. has contacted Ellen's representatives for comment but hasn't heard back yet. Margaret remarked that their connection went back to when they were both rising comedians, before Ellen achieved nationwide prominence in the late-1980s thanks to a successful appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. 'I opened for her in the 1980s when she was a headliner in comedy clubs and not – way, way before her big fame,' Margaret remembered. 'So then, when I would do later, when I would do her talk show in the 2000s, she acted like we just met. And I'm like: 'B****, what?'... Like, that's weird. We go way back,' she said, calling Ellen's conduct 'creepy and weird.' She then alleged that when David Bowie made an appearance on Ellen's show, 'he was so excited that, the night before, that I had come to his show wearing this giant Chinese emperor outfit.' Margaret stated: 'He was really thrilled about it and he talked at length about it, and she cut it out of the show, which made me so mad.' She claimed the 'producer, which was a really good friend of mine, had to call me and tell me: 'I can't believe she did this but she cut it out of the show, but you need to know that he was going on and on about your outfit. He loves you. God said your name.'' Margaret took the view that Ellen's decision to delete the footage was 'so rude,' although she acknowledged: 'I don't know if it was personal. Maybe it was for time. But still, I'm gonna take it personally, just 'cause I decided to.' After Ellen's show ended in 2022 in a maelstrom of controversy about the backstage treatment of staff, she largely withdrew from the spotlight. She and her wife Portia de Rossi led a mainly private life in Montecito, a Santa Barbara enclave that is also home to such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Megan Markle and Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom. Last year she staged a comeback, going on tour with an act called Ellen's Last which was filmed as the Netflix special For Your Approval. While promoting her tour, she addressed the scandal that had overshadowed her career, saying she was 'kicked out of show business' for being 'mean.' She recalled: 'The hate went on for a long time and I would try to avoid looking at the news. The "be kind" girl wasn't kind. That was the headline,' via Rolling Stone. Sarcastically saying there are 'no mean people in show business,' she noted: 'I became this one-dimensional character who gave stuff away and danced up steps.' Ellen joked: 'Do you know how hard it is to dance up steps? Would a mean person dance up steps? Had I ended my show by saying: "Go f*** yourself," people would've been pleasantly surprised.' She confessed she 'didn't know how to be a boss' and pointed out she learned to practice her profession at 'Charlie's Chuckle Hut' rather than at business school. 'The show was called Ellen and everybody was wearing T-shirts that said "Ellen" and there were buildings on the Warner Brothers lot that said Ellen, but I don't know that that meant I should be in charge,' she observed.
