My new book is coming June 24, 2025! And I’m thrilled. Make It Ours: Crashing the Gate of Culture with Virgil Abloh is a professional biography of designer Virgil Abloh, who was the first Black artistic director at Louis Vuitton. It tells the story of his rise from Rockford, Illinois to Paris.

It’s the story of an evolving fashion industry, cultural upheaval and racial justice protests. They all played a part in Abloh’s success. He brought talent, tenacity, confidence and a belief that no place, no goal was off limits.

Abloh wasn’t the first Black man to reach the top rungs of the fashion industry. Ozwald Boateng proceeded him. So did Edward Buchanan. But Abloh had the benefit of social media, an ascendant menswear industry and a changing definition of luxury. When I covered Abloh’s collections for Off-White, I was often highly critical of them. But I was also fascinated. His fans saw and appreciated something that, as a fashion critic, I didn’t. I wanted to understand why he resonated so deeply, and what that meant for the industry’s future. In the end, I emerged an admirer. Abloh was extraordinary.

From People.com:

“Groundbreaking fashion designer Virgil Abloh was a singular innovator within the industry upon his death at age 41 in November 2021. Now, the entrepreneur's influence will be explored in a forthcoming biography.

PEOPLE can share an exclusive first look at Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh, a new biography about the fashion icon publishing via Crown this summer. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Robin Givhan, the book explores Abloh’s lasting legacy on the fashion industry and beyond.

When Abloh was appointed as Louis Vuitton’s head of menswear in 2018, he became the first Black designer to serve as the brand’s artistic director in its nearly 170 year history. Prior to that, he founded the fashion brand Off-White. Make It Ours, however, explores “so much more than his own journey,” the book’s description states, and focuses on the impact of Abloh's transformative work…”

KIRKUS REVIEW

On Nov. 28, 1973, Parisian haute couture faced off against the upstart American designers, and the Americans blew them away. In her debut book, Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post fashion critic Givhan delivers a delightful, encyclopedic exploration of the players and leaders in the field.

The differences between the Paris world of fashion, with its strict rules of handmade quality and personal fit, and that of the ready-to-wear American, were hard and fast. In France, the term “haute couture” is a legally protected designation, and the established houses dictate every aspect of fashion. In America, it was the department stores determining the latest looks. Enter Eleanor Lambert (1903-2003), whose work establishing American fashion changed an entire industry. She was public relations representative for all the best designers, and she established New York’s first fashion week, in 1943, as well as the Council of Fashion Designers of America. It was at a lunch with the curator of Versailles that the idea of a fashion fundraiser was born. Though it was never meant to be a competition, five American and five French designers came together that November evening, and the American style of design and show was established. The French—showing Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro and Dior’s Marc Bohan—followed their established style of exhibition. The wealthy onlookers took notice when the American sportswear designer Anne Klein (whom nobody wanted there) showed off her models with snappy movements and attitudes. Excitement built with the black models, who really made the show. African-themed outfits by Stephen Burrows were free, whirling and vital. Halston, Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta also showed well, and the world of fashion never looked back. These days, writes the author, fashion “feeds a constant cultural conversation with intermittent spikes of media saturation and personal punditry.”

Readers need not be fashion mavens to enjoy this entertaining episode of history, enhanced by Givhan’s effortless ability to illustrate the models and designers (particularly Lambert) who changed how we dress.