Robin Givhan was the first fashion journalist to receive a Pulitzer prize. Now she’s leaving The Washington Post

„Ik was behoorlijk kritisch op Virgil Abloh. Ik zag hoe gedreven hij was, dat zijn klanten hem grensverleggend vonden, dat ze zich door hem vertegenwoordigd voelden, het gevoel hadden dat ze hem kenden – ik kan geen andere ontwerper bedenken die zo’n intieme relatie had met zijn fans, die DM’s beantwoordde van mensen die hij niet kende. Hij had het altijd over ‘wij’, alsof zijn fans verantwoordelijk waren voor zijn succes, en dat waren ze op een bepaalde manier Also, they used social media, but I mainly looked at the quality of the clothing, the female fashion of his own brand off-white, and he had too many ideas As if they had lost a friend, I decided to write a book about him. If you are somewhere in the middle of it, it is difficult to properly estimate its impact.

Men -fashion designers often say that they hear from women that they also wear their clothes and that they ask them to design for them too. But When a men’s fashion designer starts making clothes for women, everything is lost that those women loved. They probably came for a beautifully cut jacket, and then such a designer thinks he should make tight skirts. At Virgil, who first only made men’s fashion, the women’s fashion also felt so sung.

Virgil Abloh was not only one of the first black creative directors of a large fashion house, he was the first without traditional fashion background; He was trained as an architect. He really changed something in the fashion world. A creative director used to be focused on clothing. Later the advertising campaigns and the stores were added. Since Virgil Abloh, a creative director must also be a social media director, a party planner, a celebrity. Someone can still be such an extraordinary talented fashion designer, if you are not willing to be a personality, the face of a house, then I don’t know if you can still lead a large fashion brand these days.

The influence of the sneaker culture on Virgil’s success is not to be underestimated. He could never have gotten that far if things were not already changing. That so many black men – athletes, hip -hop artists – largely determined what fashion for men was, opened doors for him.

“Why are female designers not being hoisted on the shield as the men?”

Virgil was always described as the son of Ghanaian immigrants, never as Afro-American, which would also have been correct. He has been to Ghana and saw poverty there, how challenging his life might have been if he grew up there. But he also saw a society that was run at every level by people who looked like he: truck drivers, garbage men, doctors, lawyers, the president. Children of African immigrants know that they can become everything. Moreover, they are not responsible for the history of slavery. Many African-Americans tell their children: you have to be prepared for obstacles to come, you have to be twice as good as others. I also realized that I didn’t have the luxury of being mediocre. At my house, school went for everything.

My parents came from the south of the US. They met in Chicago, on collegethen my mother followed my father to Detroit. He worked for the postal services, she for the [christelijke jongerenorganisatie] YMCA. I was their only child. I always make the joke that I can never write a memoir because I have no nasty stories about my childhood. When we visited my grandparents in Mississippi, segregation was never mentioned, I think to protect myself and just let me have beautiful memories of my grandparents’ farm. A protected youth is valuable: I taught me to see possibilities and to start from the good in people. Only later did my father told me what it was like to serve his country during the Second World War and then return to the segregated south. My parents had to overcome so many obstacles and yet they were not bitter at all. I wonder what they could have achieved if they could have followed their dreams.

I actually started to write about fashion by chance. I was a general reporter at the Detroit Free Pressbut missed a subject that was completely mine. Then the person who wrote about fashion went to do something else. Fashion was not seen as a serious subject, but Especially when something is seen as an unimportant subject, you can surprise with interesting stories. One of the nicest and most meaningful reactions I received after I was the first fashion journalist in 2006 to get a Pulitzer came from a colleague from another newspaper who has written about fashion for much longer than me. She said that thanks to my fashion journalism prize, her editors were taken much more seriously.

In 2000 I am Vogue start working. I thought: if I want to write for a fashion magazine then this is the summum. And I always wanted to live in New York. Fashion magazines, unlike newspapers, depend on advertisements from the companies they write about, they are part of the fashion ecosystem. That makes journalism difficult in fashion magazines. There are journalistic stories in fashion magazines, but not all journalistic stories are welcome. At that time there was a designer who went from one brand to the other without making a success of something. If you have the right people behind you, you can make a mistake in fashion. I wanted to write about that, but that was not the intention. I left within a year.

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Fashion is about innovation, but within the fashion world itself changes often start to slow slowly. In the industry it is about inclusiveness and diversity all the time, but why does that only apply to designers and not to the business positions? And why still only rent all those fashion houses dudes in? Why are talented female designers not being raised on the shield as the men? And then we are back at SuperDun after a few years of body positivity. Everything remains the same, in an almost stubborn way.

During the pandemic there were no shows, and I also started writing about art and politics. It felt like a good time to broaden my gaze. When the international fashion shows started again, I didn’t go anymore. Sometimes I miss the magic of a really good show. But you have to go to a lot of mediocre fashion shows to meet that one pearl.

The Washington Post offered all people who have been employed for ten years, and all people from the video editing and opinion editorial team. I doubted for a long time. [Eigenaar] Jeff Bezos has determined that the Opinion pagimas could only be written about the free market and free choice, but did not interfere with the rest of the editors. I have always been able to write what I wanted. At the end of July I decided to do it. Many people left, new ones are being added, there are changes that look ominous. There are plenty of other places where I can plant my flag, where I can talk about culture, the current circumstances. I have a firm belief in mainstream media.“

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