Virgil Abloh's Unconventional Path To Luxury Fashion
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today is Pulitzer Prize-winning senior critic at large for The Washington Post, Robin Gavon. Her voice is among the most distinctive and influential in the world of American criticism. She writes about fashion, not as surface-level aesthetics, but a lens through which to examine politics, power, and how we see ourselves and each other.

Over the decades, Gavon has written essays that decoded First Lady Michelle Obama's 2009 decision to wear sleeveless dresses during formal and public appearances, a choice that became both a fashion statement and a political one, to the unspoken codes behind Supreme Court justices' robes and the symbolism embedded in the Vatican's ornate vestments.

She has also explored the spectacle of fashion weeks and the powerful symbolism of the hoodie in the wake of Trayvon Martin's killing.

Her latest book, Make It Ours, Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh, is both a vivid portrait of the late designer and an examination of the world that shaped him. Abloh, who died in 2021 at the age of 41, following a private battle with a rare and aggressive form of heart cancer, was best known as the first Black American to serve as artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear.

He came of age in the 90s and 2000s, a time when culture was shifting, remixing, and challenging tradition. Givhan explores how his vision and his instincts as a digital native, deeply immersed in the disruptive ethos of hip-hop, cracked open elite gate-kept spaces. She makes the reader ponder whether Abloh might be the last of a rare breed, a creative who moved seamlessly between streetwear and luxury, architecture and art.

Robin Gavon's career began in her hometown as a writer for the Detroit Free Press. She's also written for a range of publications, including Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Essence, and The New Yorker. In 2006, she made history as the first fashion writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Her previous book, The Battle of Versailles, tells the story of a groundbreaking 1973 face-off between American and French designers held at the Palace of Versailles.

Robin Gavon, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much for having me. You were not always convinced that Virgil Abloh was one of the greats in the ways that we name great fashion designers or artists, especially as it relates to his designs for women. What changed your mind?

Well, I think as I began to explore his career and really honed in on the impact that he seemed to have among his fans and within a particular consumer base, I was struck by how deeply they seemed to have a connection to him and the meaning that they found in his work and

that it made me start thinking about sort of a whole other sort of category in which to think about

great fashion and, you know, a category that is not so much about the actual look of the clothes, but the meaning of them and what a brand name can convey to someone that you don't even know. That's really interesting in thinking about this secondary category, because for those who are in the fashion world, the

That might be surprising that maybe the focus is not always just on the look of the clothing. It's also on the marketing and the distribution and all of those things. But how all of those things aren't always considered in that initial process of thinking about a garment or a fashion line.

For sure. I mean, I think, at least for me, as you know, traditionally, criticism within fashion has focused on, okay, has the designer said something new about the way that a dress can look? Have they come up with an interesting silhouette? Or have they used pattern and print in a different way? But with Virgil, I sort of started to realize that in many ways,

His work had more in common with, say, a sports jersey because it's not so much the shape of the jersey that matters. It's what is written on it. It's the team that it represents and the way in which that team evokes meaning and support and camaraderie. And he was able to do that with the brand that he originally started, which was Off-White.

And he created a brand and instilled meaning in that brand. And then whatever he put underneath the brand also had meaning. But in a very different way, I think, from the way that, say, Chanel represents something. You know, Chanel still comes down to this sort of degree of status. With Off-White, it was...

More than status. It was community and it was, oh, I understand you and I see you and you see me. Mm-hmm.

Robin, it's hard to talk about Virgil without talking about Kanye West. He is a polarizing figure today with his erratic behavior, anti-Semitic remarks. It's all kind of overshadowed his career. But at one time, he was one of the most influential artists in the world in music and fashion. And we likely wouldn't be talking about Virgil if he hadn't met and worked with Kanye during his rise. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah.

Oh, I think that's absolutely fair. I mean, the two of them met in Chicago when Virgil was finishing up work on a master's in architecture and Kanye was fresh from the college dropout and late registration. The thing that was so compelling for me was in this sort of window of time when Virgil was ascendant,

Kanye had a breath of ambition and confidence that was energizing to anyone who was within that sort of cyclone of activity. And his reach was incredible. I mean, he essentially would sort of

bring into his circle anyone who he thought could help him solve a creative problem or could further a creative ambition. And one of his biggest creative ambitions, in addition to music, was to build a fashion company.

And he and Virgil connected over fashion, but also aesthetics and just conversations about design and creativity. How would you describe what they built together over that time that they worked together? Because they both kind of had this very profound belief that nothing was impossible. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that, you know, Virgil started out doing and he began as sort of an assistant and then eventually became creative director. And he worked on album covers. He brought in people who could help Kanye when he, Kanye was working on various collaborations of which there were countless albums.

There was incredible amounts of travel as Kanye was performing and in concert. And during those downtimes, it also allowed Virgil to build a sense of community with these many, many creative guys who were part of that world. Designers like Kim Jones and Matthew Williams were part of that cohort as

And they went on.

to really substantial careers. But with Virgil, there came a point when all of the energy that he was putting into Kanye's creative desires and sitting in the room when Kanye would have a conversation with Nike or Vuitton about a collaboration, that Virgil began to ask, what am I doing for myself in all of this?

How much of a cool factor did Virgil have before he met Kanye? What was he doing and how was he looking at the world of fashion and music and DJing before the two of them met?

I mean, Virgil grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and some people have referred to that as a suburb of Chicago, but it's really its own city. It's an hour and a half away from Chicago, right? It's an hour and a half away. It's very much in the northern part of the state, and it is equidistant from Chicago to Iowa. So, you know, you can very quickly go from city to cornfields.

And he grew up in an environment where he was often a minority within minorities. You know, he went to Catholic high school, which was predominantly white. The most significant minority group within that was Hispanic. And so then he was, again, a minority within a minority group.

And, you know, people have always described him as the son of Ghanaian immigrants. And that was a description that intrigued me because he was never simply referred to as African American. And I think that distinction says a lot about the sort of hierarchies of privilege in the U.S., the way that people's

Confidence is bolstered by a sense of their history and a sense of their place. And I think that was significant in the way that Virgil thought of his possibilities and the way that he proceeded through a lot of the spaces that can be challenging when you're the only one of your own.

you know, background or ethnicity or gender in them. Can you describe his design aesthetic? You mentioned...

His label Off-White. He also had several other ventures. Bentriel, which is a line of logo t-shirts. Pyrex Vision, which repurposed discontinued Ralph Lauren rugby flannels. But can you describe how his aesthetic kind of evolved across these brands and maybe what he was most known for as far as how they looked?

Yeah, his aesthetic really started with T-shirts. Ben Trill came out of a project that he had as a DJ with contemporaries who also entered the design world. And it was really a T-shirt with this font that sort of looked like something out of a Rocky Horror Picture Show. And that led to Pyrex Vision, which he described as an art project that

And then Pyrex Vision, which was 2012, eventually became Off-White, which he founded in 2013. And it was in the menswear universe. And they were bits of sportswear, T-shirts, hoodies, t-shirts.

Very sort of basic garments, but were printed with the name Off-White and his markings, which were these sort of hazard lines that you might see on a roadway under construction, quotation marks around different words because he loved an ironic gesture.

And then as that line grew, it also came to include these red zip ties that look like something that you might find as an anti-theft device in a department store. Something sort of remarkable to me as you describe his aesthetic is that he did not even know how to stitch or sew.

But he knew how to market. He knew how to sell a story, how to connect with digital audiences, how to use that imagery as a way to connect maybe with, even though it wasn't his intent, social and political movements and ideologies in a way, and also bypass gatekeepers.

You know, when I started researching the book, one of the things that I was so struck by was that when he got the job at Vuitton, there was such an outpouring of excitement. And it was received among some of his fans as something akin to a civil rights victory. I mean, they really saw it as they sort of described it, a win for the culture, but

And I knew that there had been black men who had preceded him, but they didn't receive the same kind of acclaim, you know, outside of the fashion industry the way that Virgil had. And so part of the book was to explore why is that? And one of the things was social media. And he used it

in a way that was different from just, you know, putting his designs, you know, into an Instagram feed or live streaming a show. He really tried to be transparent and

with the folks on social media. If someone DMed him, he would respond. He hired people that he just met over Instagram. And people felt like they were having a real conversation with him and making an authentic connection. And that was very different from what previous designers had done.

I'm just really interested, though, in the jump from where he was, where he was basically a part of sneaker culture. The sneakerhead community is famously passionate. They line up for new drops. They collect limited editions like treasures.

And they treat certain shoes like holy grails. It's a massive market. And Virgil himself even collected, I think you wrote, something like 2,000 pairs of sneakers. So they are very intense. They have a connoisseurship around sneakers that is intense.

really akin to the kind of connoisseurship that's once surrounded haute couture. You know, they understand how they are constructed and the various iterations and the colorways and the colorways that perhaps were a mistake or a one-off that makes the shoe that much more valuable. And when Virgil collaborated with Nike,

in 2017 to rework 10 of their most well-known sneakers.

That was really a moment when his talent and just his identity got blasted around the world with the enormous megaphone that is Nike. Can you explain the idea behind the 10? From my understanding, it's this design rule that he had really blurred the line between creator and consumer. What was he trying to say about who gets to be a designer in that context?

Well, the 10 originally began as a way for Nike to sort of stop the bleeding of market share to Adidas. And the plan was to take 10 of their most recognizable, iconic sneaker styles and work with an outside collaborator to essentially reimagine them.

And Virgil was tapped for this because of his work at Off-White, because he seemed to be someone who was sort of in touch with the zeitgeist. And one of his ideas was that...

They were to serve as an example to a kid who was a sneakerhead and creative that they could go into a Nike store, buy any pair of sneakers,

essentially cut them up, rework them, and claim them as their own design. It was this notion of fashion as do-it-yourself, but at a very high level and as exemplified by someone of his stature for a company as well-known and as large as Nike as

And it was really in his wheelhouse as well because Virgil, I think, was best at when he could take something that already existed and alter it and essentially make it his own. He called it his 3% philosophy, which was if you take something that exists and you alter it by 3%, you've essentially created something wholly new.

Some people would argue with that. I think some copyright lawyers might argue with that. I mean, he was sued quite a bit for these ideas. But I'm also just wondering, I mean, what seems so interesting about this is that he named it, but don't designers to a certain extent do this anyway? They're influenced by each other in the way that art is influenced, right?

Other designers certainly are inspired by, pay homage to, you know, work that has come before. But, you know, their take on it is always, well, that was just the starting point. And what I have created is in my own vernacular. With Virgil, the whole point was the remix.

And to some degree, that I think reflects the fact that he was a DJ and he loved to, you know, to do that. And that was one of his sort of early delights when he was in high school and in college. And so there is this sort of remixing ethos of the DJ that comes through in his fashion work.

which is you don't necessarily have to have written the melody or written the lyrics, but if you can rework them into something that is creative and compelling, then that is your work. That is your output. That is your creative gesture.

Our guest today is Robin Gavan, and we're talking about her new book, Make It Ours, Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh, who in addition to fashion was also a DJ. Let's listen to a song featuring Abloh produced by 88 Jerk called Tesla. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. Perfectionism doesn't advance anything ironically.

as a creative and as a designer, there's no wrong way to go about the future of your career. The only failure is not to try. You know, and I think that

Designers will have like a, like creators or artists, we have a natural convention.

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My guest is Robin Gavon. She's the senior critic at large for The Washington Post, where she writes about fashion as a way to explore culture and politics and identity.

In 2006, she became the first fashion writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. As part of her Pulitzer Prize-winning portfolio, Givhan examined the sartorial choices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, highlighting how their clothing conveyed contrasting political and cultural signals.

Her new book is Make It Ours, Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh. Her first book, The Battle of Versailles, was an account of the legendary 1973 fashion show that altered the global hierarchy of style.

Can you talk with us just a bit about, like, I'm really fascinated by the urban wear then transitioning into street wear and maybe in those beginning days what street wear actually signified and looked like. Like, what did it look like? I know it encompassed lots of different styles, but kind of, yeah, that quintessential look. Yeah, I mean, urban wear was really the aesthetic that grew out of hip-hop.

And that was something that was overwhelmingly dominated by Black entrepreneurs who wanted to take the mood, the sensibility of hip hop and grow it into yet another kind of business. And to be clear, a lot of the items that were tucked under the Urban label were

were really just sportswear that just happened to be created by a black person. And that was in many ways quite frustrating for some of those early entrepreneurs. Streetwear was an even broader extension. Streetwear took on a lot of the brands like Supreme and a bathing ape, which came out of Japan and,

And they were focused on T-shirts and hoodies and sneakers and really sort of clothes that had an athletic sensibility, an informality, and were driven by the branding. You know, I mean, probably the quintessential streetwear brand was really supreme in that it was the kind of brand that could evoke

a kind of irrational enthusiasm among its fans. By the time Virgil was appointed as artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton in 2018, I mean, that appointment catapulted him to global fame. But something that really stood out for me in your book was just how small a slice of the pie menswear actually represents for LV. I think you wrote it brings in around 5% of revenue?

Five, 10%, yeah. Five to 10%. Can you talk about, I don't even know if the word is disconnect because that probably is not the right word, but this symbolic weight of Virgil's role and the actual business footprint and what it tells us about Virgil.

and visibility and influence. I mean, this story that you tell about LV and Supreme is one example of this because streetwear, by extension, is urban wear, which is basically Black culture. Yeah, streetwear is sort of a gift that I think a lot of Black creative people have given to fashion. Yeah.

And to say, you know, 5%, 10% of, you know, a brand's revenue may sound small. But, you know, when you're talking about a billion-dollar brand, that's still significant. But, you know, Vuitton occupies, I think, a particular place within fashion, right?

And by that, I mean its story, its brand DNA, as luxury brands like to describe it. It's not rooted in clothing. You know, LV began as, you know, with luggage, with trunks. And so there's not this kind of

revered garment that designers are both gifted with and burdened with always having to kind of recreate or, you know, transform in some way. It's not like Chanel and little boucle jacket. It's not like Dior and its new look silhouette. So Vuitton always had this kind of more malleable design history and

And it's also a brand that is really known by its logo on its bags. And it sort of represents money, for lack of a better word. It's a way of telegraphing that you've got some bucks. Right.

And it also was kind of moving itself into being more than just a statement about fashion, but a statement within the broader culture. And then streetwear comes along. And streetwear is very much connected to the culture. It's connected to music. It's connected to sports. It's connected to a lot of the things that men in particular are interested in.

And I think all of that kind of combines to make this place for someone like Virgil, who isn't a traditional designer, but is very much in conversation with sports, sports fans and music fans and popular culture and all the things that are sort of encompassed and represented by streetwear.

I want to talk a little bit more about this on the other side, but let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Robin Gavon, senior critic at large for The Washington Post and author of the new book, Make It Ours, Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

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I want to talk about kind of what's been happening the last few years in our country and in fashion. The racial reckoning of 2020 when so many brands made these big promises around diversity and how a lot of those pledges have quietly faded. There was something that happened during those years of the racial reckoning with the protests, especially when folks were out in the streets and protesting. Virgil said,

condemned the looting of the streetwear store Round 2 in LA. And he used the words like shame and dignity that really struck a nerve with people. What exactly did he say and how did people react to that? He posted on social media essentially a rebuke of those who had wrecked the store and sort of

took the position that, you know, someone's hard work had been destroyed. And he got a lot of pushback because people took that to mean that he was placing more value on things than

as opposed to people who were hurting and people who felt that they were being disrespected, who felt that essentially their personhood was being disrespected and put in danger. And he was not prepared for that.

You know, at another point, he had sort of suggested that people make a donation, you know, to support the protesters and to support Black Lives Matter. And he noted that he had made this $50 donation. And people responded with sort of disdain that $50, you can like, that's all that's all you think this is worth.

And he said that, well, you know, one, like the $50 reference was because he didn't want to make it sound like one had to make some huge donation in order for it to be helpful. But he also thought, perhaps naively, that...

He wasn't really putting those messages out to the millions of people who were following him. He seemed to be thinking that he was still in this intimate conversation with friends. Because this is the first time he wasn't seen as a darling on the Internet, that he wasn't having a positive experience.

interaction. Yes, this was the first time that Black Twitter, as it was, rose up and basically said, like, you're wrong, and even started a little bit of revision on their assessment of his work. And he responded with a really revealing, more revealing than he had ostensibly been on social media, talking about

What it was like to be, as he put it, a dark skinned black man moving through life in, you know, like Chicago where he was living and how he felt that he was the most chilling words, you know, were something like, excuse me, sir.

And that, you know, it didn't matter if he was the designer of this, that or whatever. When he was walking down the street, he was just a black guy who might fit the description. And it was really the first time that he spoke that publicly about those fears, about those, that sense of his reality. And afterwards, he

His collections for Off-White, I think, became much more nuanced and much more reflective of his own background and ethnicity and more complicated and, to me, more interesting. His death came as a great surprise to those in the industry and, of course, the general public.

I think you kind of alluded to this or you said this just a few moments ago that you wonder how much that would have become more complex. He would have leaned more into that as the years had gone on.

Yeah, I mean, he created a scholarship fund under the auspices of the Fashion Scholarship Fund, which already existed. And, you know, it was the Virgil Abloh, you know, postmodern scholarship. And it was focused on, you know, students of color, but also students who were coming from places that didn't ordinarily get access to sort of fashion information and fashion mentoring.

And I think that eventually became sort of this very significant repository of his legacy. And

I mean, I do think that both the combination of considering one's legacy and the incredibly swift way in which the landscape, you know, shifted in the space between his stepping into the role at Vuitton in, you know, 2018 and his death in 2021.

I mean, so much happened. He really only got a chance to put, you know, two collections on the runway before COVID shut things down. Fashion really slowed down. Everything shifted. The George Floyd backlash happened. I mean, in hindsight, it feels like a decade or more crammed into just a few years. Yeah. Did you all ever meet?

I was a professional acquaintance, and I met him on a couple of occasions. And for me, the earliest and the most memorable was when he was in the semifinals for the LVMH Prize, which was a big fashion prize to find new talent.

And they're in this sort of space during this crowded cocktail party, and they're presenting their work to editors and retailers who are passing through. And he was there in his little booth with his Off-White collection. And there in the booth was also Kanye West.

the ultimate hype man who was going on and on about the wonders of Virgil and the collection. And of course he was sucking a lot of oxygen out of the room because Virgil

Video cameras were trained on him. And I remember getting there and just sort of being like, I got to get around Kanye because Virgil's in there and I want to talk to Virgil. And he was there, very even keel, calm, just sort of quietly talking about his work.

And, you know, that was, again, like this comparison between the two that you don't really want to make, but always sort of seem to be there. And it was Virgil playing by the rules of fashion and meeting all sort of the players, but at the same time doing his own thing and saying, I want to be part of this game.

But I'm going to be part of it on my own terms. You know, your take on fashion, your take on this book, this book is really a book of scholarship that takes us through contemporary fashion, through Virgil Abloh's story.

You're from Detroit. You have had a long career, first as a fashion writer, journalist, and then cultural critic. Who and what was informing your worldview and approach to criticism when you decided this was what you wanted to do? Wow. You know, I don't.

I don't know that I ever like decided. I mean, I sort of stumbled into fashion writing mostly because I was really desirous of a beat when I was starting out and the fashion beat opened up.

And my first footsteps into it really began with menswear. So being able to write about Virgil, it really touched on a lot of the things that I initially found engaging about fashion. You've also written quite a bit about fashion as it relates to politicians. You've written so insightfully about this over the years. I keep thinking about your early coverage of Michelle Obama. And fast forward a bit further.

We see a different kind of political dressing emerge, this time with the right and MAGA hats and camo vests and American flags. And you have actually called this kind of a form of populist, like a populist uniform, especially online. And I was just wondering, I was just wondering if fashion still holds that kind of symbolic power in the digital age, like a world that Virgil Abloh was able to gain a deep foothold in.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think fashion has just become even more political because, you know, at its core, right, fashion is about how we define ourselves publicly. And in the conversation about everything from like the erasure of fashion

and people of color from websites documenting history to the level of discomfort that people have talking about gender and gender roles. All of those things relate to how we define ourselves publicly, and that relates to fashion.

And, you know, something as simple as who wears a dress and why we care and how deeply that can get under someone's skin if the wrong person is wearing a dress or the wrong kind of dress. I mean, the fact that there's a president who prefers that women appear naked

a certain way that is very, you know, indicative of a particular definition of femininity, I think says that the role of fashion just becomes more and more powerful. Robin Gavon, this has been such a pleasure to talk with you about this book. And thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so much for having me. It was such a great conversation.

Robin Gavon is a senior critic-at-large for The Washington Post. Her new book is Make It Ours, Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh. After a short break, our film critic Justin Chang reviews the sports drama F1 starring Brad Pitt. This is Fresh Air.

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In the new movie F1, Brad Pitt plays a down-on-his-luck race car driver who gets a second shot at Formula One glory. It's the latest summer blockbuster from Top Gun Maverick director Joseph Kaczynski, and it also features Javier Bardem, Cary Condon, and Damson Idris. F1 opens in theaters this week, and our film critic Justin Chang has this review. The full title of Brad Pitt's new Formula One racing film is F1 the Movie.

which is helpful given the sheer range of F1-themed programming there is, from live-streamed races to documentary series. But it's also a little misleading. There's been no shortage of memorable F1 movies over the years, like the 1967 Grand Prix and the 1971 Steve McQueen drama Le Mans. Among more recent titles, I'm a big fan of Rush, about the real-life racing rivals James Hunt and Niki Lauda,

and Senna, a wrenching documentary portrait of the three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna. It's probably too early to welcome F1 into that pantheon, but this slick, precision-tooled entertainment is clearly gunning for a spot. The movie, directed by Joseph Kaczynski, is hugely enjoyable and dazzlingly well-made. And it does for the 61-year-old Brad Pitt who

what Kaczynski's last film, Top Gun Maverick, did for Tom Cruise. It casts him as a stubborn outsider who shows he's still got a surprise, and maybe even a triumph, up his sleeve. Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, who was a rising Formula One star in the 90s, until a devastating crash sidelined his career. Thirty years later, Sonny is a professional gambler and occasional race car driver for hire.

He'll drive for any team that needs him, not for the chump change he gets paid, but for his enduring love of the sport. The plot kicks into gear when Ruben, an old friend and racing buddy, played by a boisterous Javier Bardem, shows up out of the blue and begs Sonny to drive for his struggling Formula One racing team, Apex. Sonny reluctantly agrees and heads to Apex headquarters in London.

but immediately clashes with the team's other driver, the much younger Joshua Pierce, played by Damson Idris. Joshua is a bit of a hothead, and he resents being tied to a has-been like Sonny. But Sonny, whom Pitt plays with a signature mix of aloofness and swagger, has years more experience, and he knows how to use that experience to get under Joshua's skin.

As the film leaps from one Grand Prix race to another, the destinations include Monza, Italy, Las Vegas, and Abu Dhabi, the men's rivalry heats up on and off the course.

At one point, Sonny pulls a move that ends up wrecking both his and Joshua's cars, sending Ruben into an understandable fury. I'm sorry, Ruben, for demolishing not one but both of your lovely cars, for coming back into your life only to destroy it. Is this your revenge for Monaco? Yeah, I waited 30 years and came all this way to humiliate myself on global television. Sonny, you think I brought you in to make my other driver quit?

Listen, he's cocky, he's arrogant, he's got a lot to learn. You were cocky, you were arrogant, and you had a lot to learn. I'm not here to hold anyone's hand. I'm here to race. No, you're not. Sonny, you're here to give me a heart attack. I have to decide whether to continue this fiasco or pull the plug now. You have till the end of the season. By which time Apex will be worth less than my shoes!

You don't have to know a thing about cars, racetracks, or Formula One regulations to guess where this epic of male aggression is headed. It's a safe bet that Sonny and Joshua will learn to work together, and that one or both of them will be injured on the long road to victory. It's also not a surprise when Apex's technical director, Kate, played by the terrific Carrie Condon, generates romantic sparks with Sonny against their better professional judgment.

But if the overall arc of F1 is fairly predictable, the movie is good at keeping you off balance from moment to moment. At times it seems to borrow its philosophy from Sonny, who believes that success is often counterintuitive. You have to slow down to speed up, and sometimes you even have to crash out to come in first. After seeing Kaczynski's earlier action movies, like Tron Legacy and Oblivion, I came away thinking he was little more than an empty stylist.

But his film craft here, as in Top Gun Maverick, is awfully impressive. The racing scenes, beautifully shot by Claudio Miranda and crisply edited by Stephen Mirioni, are at once hyperkinetic and elegant. The cross-cutting is insane, but you never get lost. Pitt and Idris did their own driving, reaching speeds of up to 180 mph, which only adds to the verisimilitude.

It takes more than sterling action technique, though, to put across a movie like F1 persuasively. It takes a filmmaker who can deftly juggle male weepy conventions and movie star egos, and who can take the most cliche of Hollywood narratives, the aging veteran giving it one more go, and invest it with real feeling. Interestingly, F1 only goes soft when it saddles Sonny with a lovely but redundant monologue about what he gets out of racing and why he finds it so thrilling.

It briefly halts the movie in its tracks, which brings unwelcome meaning to the term pit stop.

Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed F1, starring Brad Pitt. If you'd like to catch up on our interviews you've missed, like our conversation with reporter Carter Sherman on how miseducation, digital culture, and politics are reshaping sex and intimacy for Gen Z, or with actor Eben Moss-Bakrak from the FX series The Bear, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of fresh air interviews.

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