How a fashion critic does D.C.
A long-awaited edition of "The Most Interesting Person in D.C."
I’m picky about the fashion criticism that I read. Some of it is too gauzy, too metaphorical, and it makes me feel like an idiot for not being able to see the universe in a pair of trousers, the way the author evidently can. Some fashion criticism leans too far in the other direction — literal and oversimplified — and that bothers me, too. I don’t like feeling patronized.
Robin Givhan’s style is just right. As the former fashion critic at the Washington Post (she is now the newspaper’s senior critic-at-large), she knows how to write about clothes and their context in a way that is elegant and matter-of-fact. When I read her work, I always leave feeling refreshed, improved, and full of professional admiration.
Robin has spent much of her career traveling to New York, London, Paris, and Milan for fashion shows, but she lives and writes in D.C. Obviously, she’s been on my long list for “The Most Interesting Person in D.C.” since I started running the series. On a steamy morning in early June, we met up at a coffee shop to talk about reporting on fashion from D.C. and how she writes such good opening sentences. We also dove into Make It Ours, her new biography of Virgil Abloh, an influential force in fashion who passed away of cancer at age 41, in 2021.
If you want to understand contemporary fashion, I strongly recommend Make It Ours, which was released on Tuesday. Unlike many of his peers at the top of the industry’s food chain, Abloh didn’t go to design school to learn how to make patterns and drape fabric. He arrived by way of skateboarding, deejaying, and architecture, and he spent a formative period on Kanye West’s creative team, which served as his entry point into the world of high fashion. (This was before West’s well-publicized turn toward antisemitism and hard-right politics.) Abloh’s approach to fashion was conceptual rather than technical, with a hearty dose of irony in the spirit of artists like René Magritte and Marcel Duchamp. One example: In 2018, he printed a black minidress with the words “Little Black Dress” and a pair of boots with the phrase “For Walking.”
Abloh found widespread success with his clothing brand, Off-White. The label’s blockbuster 2017 collaboration with Nike, which involved reworking ten of the company’s sneakers, became, per Robin, “Abloh’s signal creative gesture — his persuasive thesis on youth culture and what it meant to rewrite the definition of luxury.” In 2018, Abloh landed one of the biggest jobs in traditional luxury fashion when he was named artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection, making him the first Black designer in that role.
As I said, you should definitely read Robin’s book to understand how Abloh became the creative that he was and how he changed the fashion landscape along the way. Here’s our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity.
Before reading Make It Ours, I didn’t really know what Virgil Abloh was like as a person. And his personality really shines through in the book: It seems like he was an incredibly likeable man who was deeply and widely curious, earnest, and steady. In the book, you quote the fashion editor Dirk Standen as saying, “Virgil had the best social IQ of anyone I know.”
So many people I spoke with began by saying, “Oh, he’s so nice.” Initially I thought, okay, is this just the throat-clearing before they got to the point? But the more I spoke to people, the more I realized that sense of kindness really was at least part of the point. People genuinely liked talking to him. They liked working with him.
But he could be incredibly frustrating, as well. He had the ability to talk and talk and talk and wrap things in this warm cocoon of intellectualism that made you go, “Is this guy legit? Or is this bullshit?”
Did you have the chance to spend much time with him during his life?
I knew him in truly the most cursory way — in no way, shape, or form was I in his circle or a friend. I did have the chance to have an extended conversation with him, kind of by happenstance, when the Fashion Scholarship Fund asked if I would lead a Zoom conversation with Virgil and then open it up to [questions from] students.
Someone asked him, “Why did you call the brand Off-White?” He went into a whole [explanation] about people putting you in a box and not wanting to be told what you’re allowed to do. Not wanting to feel like some things were off-limits because of how you’re perceived. Hearing him talk about that with students and seeing their response and how completely enamored they were — I think about that a lot.
I definitely got that sense from your book, that he really knew how to speak to young people through fashion.
The designer Willy Chavarria had such a thoughtful and honest comment when I talked to him about Virgil. When Virgil was alive, Willy was not really a fan of his work. I think a lot of designers — technically trained designers — were not. Raf Simons had some pretty brutal things to say. [As Robin writes: “‘He’s a sweet guy,’ Simons said of Abloh. ‘I like him a lot actually. But I’m inspired by people who bring something that I think has not been seen, that is original.’”]
But Willy was so struck by the effect that Virgil had on people. He took a lesson from that. Sometimes it’s not just about: Did you create a silhouette that will outlast you in fashion history? It’s: Did it matter to anybody?
Obviously you were well-acquainted with his work before you started the book. But what took you by surprise while you were reporting it?
I was fascinated by the degree to which the excitement around menswear had expanded. There’s a generation of menswear consumers that has evolved so far beyond the years of the metrosexuals and sneakerheads into this really savvy, thoughtful [cohort] who are really into the brands, but at the same time have a very distinctive idea of how they want to look. And it has nothing to do with the vaunted legacy of one house.
Fashion houses are moving toward the consumer, versus the consumer moving towards the brand. For a long time, the thinking was: The brand tells you what you should desire. Increasingly, it’s these consumers saying, “This is what we desire. Can you give it to us in a way that’s authentic to your company but also makes sense for us?”
I also noticed that whenever Virgil was described, people would say he was the son of Ghanaian immigrants, which is true. But it was interesting to me that he wasn’t just described as African-American, which he was. It felt like that distinction meant something. Being the son of immigrants had all of the romance of chasing the American dream and coming to this place from far away. It is free from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and all of that. It gave Virgil a particular kind of freedom and confidence, and it also allowed people to sort of see him as somehow less fettered to the dark side of [American] history.
In the book, you describe Abloh as someone who wanted to design for his 17-year-old self, who was interested in skateboarding, Michael Jordan, and music. Many of us might be a little embarrassed, in adulthood, about the things we were obsessed with at that age, but I find it very cool that he wanted to honor the interests of young people in that way. I’m curious what that would be for you — do you ever think about who you were at that formative time in life, and how you might write for her?
My 17-year-old self was not interested in fashion at all. I have always said that part of the reason why I think I’ve written about fashion the way I do is that I didn’t come into the beat loving it. I was curious about it, and I found it sort of strange and magical, daunting and inspiring, and off-putting. All the feelings.
Some of that is because I grew up in the midwest, in Detroit, which people considered flyover country. Writing about fashion, I wanted to be as welcoming as possible. I wanted to give people many entry points: If you didn’t care at all about the clothing, maybe you cared about the pop culture that it referenced, or the politics that it referenced. And I’ve always tried to avoid jargon. In the beginning, I had no idea what a frog closure was. But I also felt like, even if I did, a lot of readers wouldn’t, so why not just describe it? That way everybody gets it.
So how did you start reporting on fashion?
I started at the Detroit Free Press right after graduate school as a general reporter. I started writing a lot about techno because that was happening in the clubs, and I was going to the clubs. This was a time when all the regional newspapers were really strong. Many of them had fashion writers, and they went to New York and Europe [for the fashion shows].
The Detroit paper had a fashion writer who became a columnist. They needed a new person, I really wanted a beat, and I applied for the job. And I didn’t get it because I didn’t know anything about fashion. But they said, “Why don’t you cover menswear part-time?” I went to New York to write about menswear, and it was an amazing way to enter the industry. Menswear was so much calmer than womenswear. They had shows, but not a ton of them. When you went to the showroom, the designer was ready to walk you through the collection and explain the arcane ways of production, sourcing, fabrics, and all that stuff.
Then I left and went to San Francisco because I wanted to live in a different city. I didn’t cover fashion there.
What were you covering?
I was a feature writer, so I wrote about music, lifestyle, whatever. The person who had been covering the women’s fashion industry in Detroit became an editor, and she called me and said, “The job is open. Do you want it?” It felt like unfinished business for me. I went back to Detroit to cover the women’s industry, and I did that for three years. Then I came to the Washington Post in ’95. I left the Post in 2000 and went to Vogue for a short while, then back to the Post.
And then the Daily Beast, and back to the Post again?
I am the prodigal child.
I’m curious about your stint at Vogue, because that’s a very different environment from a newspaper. What did you get out of that job?
I wanted to try my hand at a fashion magazine, and I thought, “If I’m ever going to a fashion magazine, it’s not going to be better than Vogue.” I was like Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada — in the end, I learned a lot. The biggest lesson for me was that a magazine like Vogue is part of the fashion industry, and I realized that I didn’t want to be part of the fashion system. I love being able to be a close observer, but I didn’t want to be a participant.
The first couple of times I went to a showroom as an editor at Vogue, I realized that the tone of the conversation I was having with the designer was very different from the kinds of conversations I had as a Washington Post writer. When a designer is talking to a Vogue editor about their business or a hurdle that they are experiencing, the backdrop is: Maybe the editor has solutions. Maybe they can connect me with someone who has a solution. Maybe they can help me solve this problem.
If a designer is sharing information with a Washington Post reporter, it’s perhaps because it says something about the industry that the broader public should know about — that would help them understand why clothes cost what they do, or why availability is what it is, or why production works in a certain way. Versus sharing it and thinking: Maybe this person has an idea for a better manufacturer or someone who might be able to invest in the company.
I interviewed your Post colleague Rachel Tashjian recently, and she has a similar ethos: She doesn’t want to be friends with designers, and she doesn’t think about their reactions when she’s writing fashion criticism. Rachel also mentioned that you’re masterful at writing a lede [ed. note: journalism-speak for the opening lines of a story] that’s deceptively simple and yet sets up the stakes of a story perfectly. She referenced a story you wrote about the designer Grace Wales Bonner, which begins: “It has been only two days since Queen Elizabeth II was, with great fanfare, laid to rest, and London feels like a city on the back end of exhaustion.” What’s the secret to writing a great lede?
I do love a lede that is intriguing and that sets you up for a revelation. It can be an anecdote that has a bigger meaning than the anecdote itself. But not every story offers that.
I am one of those people who will go on and on, massaging the lede. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but I need to have the lede make sense to me before I can go on. But that said, there are many times, particularly with a shorter story, where I’ll write the lede, write the story, get to the end of the story, and realize that the lede is really the kicker. It’s the end of the story. Or I’ll realize that the lede is the nut graf [ed. note: the sentence or paragraph that speaks to the bigger context of the story and why you should be reading it], and I need something else on top.
If I’m on a tremendous deadline, and it has to be done in 30 minutes, I’m just trying to get words on the page and make sure they’re spelled right.
This next question is a selfish one: I’m a D.C.-based writer who covers cultural industries, namely fashion and entertainment, that are mostly based in New York and L.A. I’m sure you got to travel to New York, London, Paris, and Milan for their fashion weeks, so maybe living in D.C. wasn’t a big impediment to your job as a fashion critic. But I’m curious about the particular challenges — and maybe advantages — of not living in the city where your beat is happening.
The challenge is that you don’t get the same experience of meeting people. It’s harder to establish relationships with key designers and players. Every time I see them, it’s in a very formal or highly organized situation. I will say, eventually I did move to New York and spent ten years there. But certainly, when I’m going to fashion shows, building in some extra time to just chat with someone in their showroom is hugely helpful.
The advantage for me was always that you’re not living and breathing fashion. I think that gives you a lot more perspective. It’s an argument that you can make about political reporters — they’re all inside the Beltway bubble, and stories that they’re obsessed with, most people aren’t all that interested in. Sometimes it’s good to be outside the company town.
I’d love to hear about your D.C. spots. I know you shop at Relish — Nancy Pearlstein, the owner, was my first “Most Interesting Person” — but I’m curious what places or people have made you feel rooted to D.C. over the years.
When I moved here, my friend group really developed, oddly enough, out of this little boutique gym that sadly no longer exists. It was called Work It!, and it was in Woodley Park. It was owned by two women who were best friends. It was one of those magical places where the owners made a point of knowing every single person who came in, and I got to know all of these really interesting women and their partners. A book club grew out of that — I got to know Nancy through the gym, too.
This is the perfect answer. It’s not what I was expecting, but I love the community aspect.
The wonderful thing about it was that it was so divorced from the typical Washington way of getting to know people. I have no idea what most of those women actually did for a living. I’ll never forget, one day, it was kind of late, and someone was giving me a ride home. We’re chit-chatting — we’d known each other for a while — and I casually asked her what she did. It was something in counterterrorism. And I was like, “What the hell? Are you kidding me?” That was a great introduction to D.C.
Before we wrap up this installment of “The Most Interesting Person in D.C.,” I’m excited to share a few of Robin’s preferred spots in the city. If you want to feel like a cultural critic, here’s where you can begin.
Five of Robin Givhan’s D.C. favorites:
The East Wing of the National Gallery of Art to visit Hahn/Cock a.k.a. “the blue rooster.”
Centrolina for the white bolognese pasta.
Relish to indulge.
The Metropolitan Branch Trail for the murals.
The plaza of the U.S. Capitol because it reminds me of how special D.C. is.
Go on, visit the blue rooster,
Eliza
I loved this! As a fashion lover who grew up in D.C. I've often felt completely outside of the New York fashion bubble. Robin Givhan's reporting has always been a treat!
That should be a gift link. I think she’s mellowed since then, but it’s still a classic.