The story of the internship of Kanye West and Virgil Abloh at Fendi Made of photocopies, coffee and $500 a month
*** UPDATE 29/11/2021 ***
This article was originally published on February 16, 2021, a few months before Virgil Abloh's untimely passing. Virgil Abloh was a source of inspiration and a pioneer, the whole editorial staff and the whole team of nss magazine huddles in condolences to the family and collaborators.
Underpaid, exploited and frustrated. These are the first three words that come to mind when talking about interns, a category that is an integral part of the world of work that has learned to use them for the most disparate tasks, including coffee and photocopying in an infinite loop of thankless tasks enclosed under a unique and large imaginary category: experience. In 2009 that role had fallen to two exceptional names such as Kanye West and Virgil Abloh, both engaged in Rome in a Fendi internship made up of cappuccinos, photocopies and other tasks that we would hardly be able to associate with the current artistic director of Louis Vuitton and to the 21 Grammy winner.
The experience at Fendi has been fundamental for the careers of both, giving substance to the ambitions and aims of both West and Abloh. In a few years, the first would have started working on his first project in fashion, the Pastelle brand which involved Abloh himself together with the trusted Don C, Willo Perron and Matt George. If it took years to see a rapprochement between LVMH and Abloh, Kanye had not only signed a contract with Louis Vuitton for the creation of some sneakers, but he had come close to signing an agreement with Arnault for the launch of the first Season of his brand Yeezy. In the meantime, Virgil was certainly not idle, quite the contrary. In addition to the role of creative director of DONDA, between 2012 and 2013 he founded first Pyrex Vision and then Off-White starting a path that in 2018 led him to find Michael Burke at Louis Vuitton. Burke himself confessed that he had never lost sight of Abloh's work, causing more than a few regrets in the Fendi house which, despite having two golden talents like Kanye and Virgil with them, preferred to let them go away to choose, years later, Kim Jones as Artistic Director. The same Jones who almost ten years earlier had been chosen by West as one of the consultants for his Pastelle brand, thus closing a circle that lasted more than a decade. After Fendi, however, Kanye did not abandon his passion for internships in fashion, working with Giuseppe Zanotti on his collaboration with Balmain (of which West was testimonial in 2016) and asking, but not getting, a position as assistant to Raf Simons.
