Virgil Abloh, entrepreneur and designer, founder of the luxury streetwear brand Off-White and Creative Director of Louis Vitton Men, decided to launch a fashion scholarship fund called “POST MODERN” in Milan to support black young creatives that are interested in starting a career in the fashion industry. In the past few months, Abloh which already showed his support towards the Black Lives Matter movement and started a fundraiser for the black community with the I Support Young Black Business capsule collection. The goal is to create more job opportunities for young black creatives. “Virgil Abloh raised $1 million dollars to benefit scholarships for Black students through the Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund, which will be managed in partnership with the Fashion Scholarship Fund (FSF), the foremost fashion-oriented education and workforce development nonprofit in the U.S,” writes the brand in the press release. “The Abloh Fund’s mission is to foster equity and inclusion within the fashion industry by providing scholarships to students of academic promise of Black, African-American, or of African descent. In addition to funding, the Post-Modern Scholarship provides additional support to make its mission happen in the form of mentorship, information and support services”.
In a recent interview released by Gq, the designer explained, as a black man, that he constantly feels in danger when he steps out of his house. “On an average trip to the grocery store in Chicago I fear I will die. The risk of literal death is the normal walk of life. [I] almost live as if I’m walking on tip-toes. Any interaction with police could be fatal to me. As a black person I have felt anger, sadness and pain every time one of us is held a victim of prejudice or systemic racism,” he continued. “I am proud to stand in solidarity with every movement to eradicate racism and police violence. Racism has to stop. It is literally killing us.”
