Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton Mens’ artistic director and CEO of his Milan-based Off-White fashion house, had a Zoom chat with British Vogue’s Olivia Singer.

“In the tone of 2020, I come under the microscope a lot,” Abloh acknowledges, as “one of the few Black designers in Paris.” We know that social media can be unkind — and the designer has felt some heat for not being proactive enough on promoting diversity in luxury fashion. And his Instagram post of a $50 contribution towards bailing out Miami protesters, who were demanding justice for the police killing of George Floyd, made him the turkey roasting in the social media oven. It was memorable.

“I’m not gonna go back to business as usual and pretend that the awakenings that we’re still in the midst of aren’t happening,” he tells Singer. “I didn’t take it lightly before but I think that, because my voice wasn’t distinct and loud enough, it didn’t resonate. To me, it’s always existed in my work for those who look at my work… But, since so many people wanna know more: here. Caveat: it’s on my terms.”

The Virgil Abloh ‘Post-Modern’ Scholarship Fund

On that note, the super talent explained the launch of his $1 million scholarship fund and accompanying mentorship program for Black college students.

The Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund has been endowed with financial contributions from Abloh himself, and further funding from his partners Louis Vuitton, Evian, and New Guards Group (the conglomerate of which Off-White is a member), as well as Farfetch.

The Abloh Fund will be operated in partnership with the Fashion Scholarship Fund (originally named the Young Menswear Association), which has operated in the U.S. since 1937 to create opportunities for young American fashion creatives of all backgrounds.

LA collective Black Anime Louis Vuitton Film

On Friday, July 10th, Virgil Abloh will launch a cinematic prequel to this season’s Louis Vuitton presentations. That film – a half-cartoon, half-reality short — is created by LA collective Black Anime and reflects the spirit of Paris seen through Abloh’s eyes: of the “colourful rascals [who] swept through the city’s gilded salons” when he was appointed artistic director of Louis Vuitton Menswear. It’s an all-Black team who have both filmed and scored it, with the vision of telling the story of Abloh’s own “motley tribe, an ‘Avengers’ kind of crew.”