Okay, did Virgil steal from WVB? (And does it matter?)

WVB FW16 LOOK 4

VA FOR LV 5 "LOOK 4"

virgil abloh is no stranger to being accused of copying designs. he hardly even denies it, defending what he calls the "three-per-cent approach”—the idea that one might create a new design by changing an original by three per cent. in my review of the show, i felt a connection to walter's designs. i mostly thought of this as my interpretation of virgil pushing the envelope more than i expected from either him or louis vuitton. it was far out like a wvb show. but then walter came out with a cryptic accusation sparking a whole new conversation that led to the claim that abloh took liberties with one particular show. so i went back through the looks for each show side by side to see how much is there. 

clearly there is some similarity between the two collections. some of the use of color is the same as well as the plush figures, seen especially with wvb look 2 and lv look 58 (TOP LEFT AND MIDDLE LEFT, RESPECTIVELY), WHICH EACH FEATURE LARGE, brightly-colored top coats adorned with the characters found throughout each collection and which form the basis for the argument that the lv show was a copy. furthermore, the lv show featured several models wearing asymmetrical sunglasses which were lightly reminiscent of some glasses produced by wvb in collaboration with fakbyfak for fw18. while these similarities make it hard to imagine wvb wasn't on virgil's mood board for lv ss21, i wouldn't go so far as to say it's a copy in any way. the wvb collection in question also featured looks like these below, and many more, that connected in absolutely no way with the lv collection. 

so it's safe to say the lv collection easily passes virgil's three percent rule. in fact, if that was the only bar that passed i think we'd be having a very different conversation about this collection. the reality is, the lv collection borrowed relatively lightly from wvb. walter claims that he spent years building up a signature language and that virgil is not a designer at all, with no language of his own. this is hardly a defensible take when virgil has clearly made his own design language - even putting out detailed glossaries defining it - and sparked countless of his own copycats. even in walter's post calling virgil out, his own design is borrowed from the designs of jamie reid, made most famous by his work for the sex pistols. apparently the irony here is lost on walter. 

it also cannot go unsaid that wvb's collection arguably included a good bit of cultural appropriation on its own. cultural appropriation is an entirely different conversation that could be a whole 2500 word piece on its own so i won't go into it here.  walter didn't spend years building up that language, rather he stole it from thousands of years of tribal art. now i'm not going to weigh in on whether or not designers should be able to borrow from other cultures, BUT IT SHOULD PRECLUDE WALTER FROM VIRTUE-SIGNALING ABOUT the proper design process to follow. 

​so did virgil copy walter? maybe a little. probably ​a little. and virgil isn't the only darling designer of the industry at the moment that owes to walter's envelope pushing menswear over the last four decades. but that doesn't mean walter has a monopoly on making plush-character adorned garments (he wasn't the first, nor will virgil be the last) or asymmetric glasses. I believe there's really no such thing as an original idea in 2020. what is most important is execution and storytelling. 

On both these fronts, virgil has walter beat. this all comes down to a desperate attention grab by a designer that wishes he was getting the attention and acclaim virgil is. and he successfully inserted himself into the conversation about the hottest designer on the planet. good on you, walter. now start making better clothes and you might work at lv one day. probably not tho lol.