Virgil’s 'Post Post-Modernism' Explained

New Eyes: A reflection after a recent visit to New York City as an outsider

The late great Virgil Abloh coined the term “Post Post-Modernism” after a conversation with RISD president Rosanne Somerson in 2017. He was describing the current socio-emotional state of American culture, where the age of intellect birthed the age of opulence and decadence, which arrived at nothingness.

I think he meant that after gorging two 9 oz Filet Mignon steaks from Peter Luger’s, grabbing a slice for good measure from Lions, Tigers and Squares for the Maybach truck drive up the west side highway toward the MET Gala, wearing a Mr. Saturday’s double-breasted suit with flared pants, that led to bedding a brown-skinned, Jamaican model from Connecticut trying to get her big break, what is left?

King Solomon said, “All is vanity and vexation of spirit” after sweating out the weaves of hundreds of wives and concubines, not to mention the Queen of Sheba’s glorious twists. In this era of selfish excess or Janelle’s Monet’s “Age of Pleasure” – the want for meaningfulness dwindles to fleeting things and temporal pastimes: the Super Bowl, Knicks, Sports Illustrated top 100, best rapper alive lists, and other drivel. The act of sex is functional, insofar as it helps define questions about gender, and less so because it is a faithful merger where two (i.e., a man and woman) become one. Thus, the number of bodies young people are catching leads to demon time. Some women in this age glorify the triple digit number of men [and women] they’ve slept with. In other words, the masculinity and domination of men in the sheets has been upended in this post post-modern culture.

The streamlined social milieu of this era has also led to excessively share sham selfie pics in search of attention and to obviate their fear of being alone or unique. The pressure to fit into the normal nomenclature of fun, career, and society causes undue internal strife and despair, particularly when the diminishing returns of likes for those posted pics are realized. Homemade influencers ask random people about their craziest experiences, whereupon young people gladly expose how they slept with their girlfriend’s girlfriend. Worse, they answer their partner’s Facetime call while in the very act of carnal knowledge with another person. The result of this heart wrenching experience is to numb the pain with purple haze in a swisher or scavenge for the hard stuff from the pusher. Others indulge in piercing their privates while others tattoo their externals to the extremes of permanently placing unique identifiers on their entire arms (sleeve), kitty, calf, face. (In the 1990s few basketball players had tats.) God forbid they graft a tiny symbol on their inner wrist, the tattoo police will excoriate them for casuistry. Britney Spears’ tramp stamp tattoo days are so gone, Gen Zers laugh as they mark their bodies with often indistinguishable letters, hieroglyphics, cartouches, numbers, figures and gematria. Hence, in the age of the Aquarius, the tainted Jesuit philosopher of yestercentury Descartes is resurrected: “I think,  therefore I am.”

Except there’s not much thinking when teenagers forgo a life of nothingness and opt for popping molly and goodnight, Vietnam pills. Suicide completions among youth is at the highest rate since it has been tracked. The disillusionment of the Alpha and Z generations is disturbing. Many of these kids have given up on life because they have no purpose, for David says “where there is no vision, my people perish.” They remember hearing some sermon from childhood – people in the post post-modern age are largely agnostic or spiritual, at best – about there being “nothing new under sun” so they shut their own lights out rather than deal with thinking about being trans- or multi-gendered or whichever pronoun to appropriate that tonight for their friends and in the morning for mama Dukes. But mama is not about to entertain their complex socio-emotional battles, she has two jobs and a doting boss with an erection  to contend with. “Just be a man,” she says as she drops off EBT paid for groceries and Popeye’s chicken for dinner.

Young people therefore turn to artists and influencers and social media to seek solace from their homely isolation in this age of opulence. But the homies on social media are fickle and Travis Scott concerts often led to stampedes that could kill you sooner than you expected. And your favorite artist disappointed you again because you thought he cared for your welfare. Of course, when Rhianna has children with ASAP Rocky, you are encouraged, though in reality there’s zero ASAP’s or RiRi’s knocking at your door. “Life ain’t fair,” you soon learn, but rather than deal with normal emotions such as fear, pain, and anxiety in a healthy way, you inflict the same pain of being ghosted or cheated on to others, because that’s the Dharmanic way of Tao living. As a result, they spew pedestrian statements like “everything is about Ying-Yang balance”, “good and evil must co-exist” and “everything happens for a reason” and attend hot- and goat-yoga classes in search of external comfort from Beelzebub, the androgynous, two-horned, double-breasted, goat-headed and hoofed one, that it was written exists to “kill, steal and destroy.” Yet for a few happy meals and toys, some people of this age sell their souls to Bob Dylan’s “chief commander” or David’s “prince of this world.” Shamanic and Satanic worship in the U.S. is at all-time high in this age of opulence and despair. The quest for fame and riches, which moth and rust destroy and which will be devalued by the coming digital currency, is ostensibly worth trading one’s soul in the post post-modern era.

Meanwhile in this age of decadence, Artificial Intelligence is replacing whatever few jobs still exist for young people to engage. Flipping burgers at Wendy’s and filling cups of Matcha latte at Starbucks will soon be a thing of the past. Young people will then seamlessly and, probably, willingly do as the World Economic Forum has so presciently predicted, “You'll own nothing and be happy.” At least in this age, you’ll still have Netflix, which was founded by the godfather of Propaganda, Edward Bernays. However, sports as previously mentioned will be free and available to occupy the mind as it did in old Rome’s colliseum, while the fashion industry will continue being corporatized to the chagrin of emerging creatives, innovators, and designers.

Indeed, in the age of nothingness, creative fashion and innovative architecture appears to be diluted by the likes of the LVMH empire and BlackRock, the trillion-dollar investment group. In this corporate environment, there is scant room for the kids from Brooklyn selling their dopes wears and gear on Crosby and Spring streets in Soho to become household names like Maison Margiela, Dior Dior (RIP Pop Smoke), Tom Ford, Hermes, and the other conglomerate controlled fashion houses in Paris, Milan, London and New York. So, what becomes of those kids? Any number of the abysmal outcomes previously stated could be their reality.

Alternatively, they could nurture and build a grassroots following on social media – well, at least  on Tik-Tok, whose algorithm is more  favorable to the entrepreneur than our very own Meta and Twitter platforms. But what is the cost of creating a social profile on a Chinese-owned company? We know the CCP has refined the social credit score model among their citizens. But would they go as far as sharing the said designer on Tik-Tok’s personal and commercial data to  the Feds. After all, Blinken made the first U.S. state visit to China since the Nixon era. Of course, in the age of decadence, people don’t care about their personal data being tracked, bought, and sold. “I have nothing to hide.” This is the typical response from a card-carrying member of the age of “nothingness.” Yet if their creative license is revoked, they would claim it to be an egregious breach of their social compact with the government. (Social networks are business concerns of the government.)

Nonetheless, the creative fashion designer has some recourse to connect with other despairing people existing in this age. He can at least squeeze a few million dollars out of them with his Spring merch collection. But ultimately when the big boys from Paris, Madison Ave., and Hollywood come with the worst possible contractual offer, save for a huge signing bonus, they usually capitulate and “sell out.” In the age of opulence, selling out is akin to “I have to feed my family, nigga…don’t tell me about selling out.” They also have to look fresh. They may be empty and hollow inside after selling out but as long they have a foreign parked outside their Beverly Hills crib, a wife and myriad side chics, they’re relatively okay. That’s called deconstructionism and dissociation. Others call it existing rather than living.

So, when Virgil Abloh stated that the fashion industry was in a post post-modern era, I think he meant it was dying a slow, writhing death that needed people like him to keep it alive. This is not dissimilar to what Nas meant when he said, “Hip-hop is so f**king dead.” He was stoking the fires for the next generation to take over. But they didn’t. As I write this missive, Nas has released a new work titled Magic 2, which congeals his place as one of the greats. However, his continued success also inadvertently shuts the door for the next young artist to enter the arena because the monetary and personal cost he paid in 1994 is much more affordable than it is in 2024. Abloh similarly made it difficult for young acolytes to come up the ranks, but he openly shared the model to do so in hopes that one day he would be dethroned as the fashion icon of the post post-modern era. Now he lays quiet in the grave – his life cut shot by a specious cancer diagnosis in 2021 – yet his appeal still goes out for someone to exceed his greatness. And by someone it doesn’t mean acclaimed music producer Pharrell Williams, who was placed in the role Abloh held as the first Black creative director for menswear at Louis Vuitton. Pharrell may have poignant insights in fashion, but doubtful Abloh meant for him to be the voice of en vogue fashion designers. Abloh often referenced Nom de Guerre, for example.

In the final throes of the age of opulence and decadence, keeping appearances and outright deception is key to keeping the prey in a trance right until the flytrap closes. This is the last feature in the age of nothingness that Abloh witnessed and was trying to expose before his untimely death. Thanks, Virgil. I see it now. Welcome to the post post-modern era, good luck, and God bless.