Quotes from Virgil Abloh

In my case, everything starts from Marcel Duchamp and the new expressive possibilities he gave us with his ready-mades. I transferred his artistic language into today's world, choosing, for example, to use pedestrian-crossing stripes as a symbol.

Ironic things are interesting.

From a very young age, as a teenager, I was into hip-hop and skateboarding and all those things that were akin to a kid in the '90s. All those things are what resulted in clothes.

I oftentimes say that I design my collections off my phone. I'm in a group chat with my team in Milan. I copy and paste. I draw. I look at trends. I don't really have an assistant. It's a modern way of working. I don't know if it's sustainable, but it's how I do it.

I don't sleep as much as normal people do.

I can come up with 30 T-shirt designs in a day, but it's just about where to slot each of them. That's streetwear to me. It's about knowing where to buy things, not this mass thing you can get anywhere.

Kanye's the best. He really, really is. He's cool. And why we've always gotten along is because we can just sit down and talk about art.

Kanye looks for the best in everything.

If you look at why people become wack as they get older, it's because they stop doing the things they did that were formative to their work. You can't mentally stay still. You can't not challenge yourself.

I just wanna start a brand that inspires and is geared towards youth.

Fashion and music are two great artistic forms that can be molded by the youth culture - our taste and our passion for evolving things in our limited time on earth allows us to look at things with fresh eyes.

My place in design history is to sort of interpret youth culture, and I think we've seen that done in fashion before - it's not a new concept - but it hasn't been done with the same vigour in a modern context.

Everything I do references something that influenced me.

All I do all day is think of ideas and implement them. That's an industry, you know. I'm trying to make art on a commercial scale.

I don't come up with ideas in a test tube; I come up with ideas by breaking test tubes. That's how I've always been.

As a young designer in tune with culture, I'm interested in the lifeline of trends.

From my perspective, I'm trying to stand for a generation. You know, each generation has designers who go along with it.

Growing up, at high school, we all used to wear Champion garments, which, in America, are standard-issue gym uniforms.

The concept with Off-White is that I have no ideal target. It's more about trying to make something for everyone. And I think that's what helps make it unique. That there isn't a specific muse.

Take Tom Sachs as an artist. His brain is more brilliant than anything, so of course, anything he puts out over a ten-year period is going to continue to be super relevant. But if you look at some artists, they have one good idea, but unless you know where it's coming from, it's not going to be lasting.

I started off as a kid who didn't care what my education was.

I hate being up onstage with a microphone.

I'm mostly into buying art from friends. I like to keep it vague - just whatever I find intriguing.

For me, there's a subtlety in focusing on the right shape of T-shirt and pant. I recognise that it's boring, but the idea is to catch people off-guard and reward them in some valuable way.