When Virgil Abloh suddenly passed away in 2021, at the age of 41 from a rare form of cancer, he occupied a unique place in the industry. As creative director of Louis Vuitton men’s, he had one of the most visible and influential jobs in fashion. He was widely celebrated for breaking down barriers and his decidedly egalitarian approach to being creative, but his unlikely path to the top meant he often encountered resistance when it came to the establishment.

It was this combination of factors that led Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic at the Washington Post, to write a book focused on his career. “I’m sure you read some of my criticism of Virgil when he was designing womenswear for Off-White—I was pretty critical, and you know, there were definitely moments when I just did not think that his work for women made sense in the broader fashion context,” she tells Nicole Phelps and Vogue.com’s Digital Style Director Leah Faye Cooper in the latest episode of The Run-Through. “But his customers felt this intimacy that I thought was unlike the relationship that other designers had with their customers. After he passed away, I thought it would be interesting to explore what I was seeing as a critic, simply responding to the clothes, and how this whole other community of people was responding to the clothes and the fact that he made them.”

Listen to the episode to learn more about what Givhan considers Abloh’s accomplishments and impact on fashion to be.