One World, a Penguin Random House imprint, to follow a book by the late designer Virgil Abloh began writing before his death in November 2021, Vogue report.
The book, titled In processco-authored by Abloh and Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, founder and editor-in-chief of the Paris-based academic fashion publication Vestoj. (Based on Vogue BusinessAronowsky Cronberg wrote a book about Abloh at the time of his death, aged 41.) In process will be a “mixed work combining cultural criticism, theory, art and personal narrative,” according to One World. The book does not yet have a publication date.
“We rely on the conversations we are having: face-to-face, by phone, by email, in message threads. We talked about Virgil’s process and ‘logic’, and about the central ideas of his practice: irony and seriousness, hybridity, paradox, the value of originality and the ‘good’ taste control,” says Aronowsky Cronberg Vogue. The project, the publisher said in a statement, has “the full support of [Abloh’s] wife, Shannon Abloh, access to his archives, and the involvement of his most trusted creative friends and collaborators. ”
The phrase “work in progress” certainly characterizes Abloh; he has long used it to describe his own process. “My investigation, my work, my trajectory speaks to, I hope, a generation of young black men who need to know that there is a wide open space for them to occupy. But it’s a work in progress,” Abloh told Aronowsky Cronberg in an interview Vestoj published in December 2021. “I am an autodidact, an adventurer and usually I am also an amateur. My career in that sense is investigative discovery. It’s about how to be a black thinker in white space; it’s about putting the black rule in the art history books. It’s about being an important black vocalist beyond the scope. “
