For me, there are few things more exciting or entertaining than diving into a person’s early work. The more I like the work, the more early work I want to see.
I recently came across the term, “nerdsniping,” from Paul Millerd. That sensation sums up what I experience when I’m researching the process of an interesting work.
For example, after I watched Fleabag, I discovered that Phoebe Waller-Bridge actually created it originally as a one-woman play in the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Then I started looking at other one-person plays, and one-person bands, and even some one-person restaurants, and I put all my research into this post.
On one of these recent searches, I came across Virgil Abloh’s first website, in 2006. This would be just before he started working with Kanye West as an assistant, when he still had a day job working as a project manager at Studio Dwell.
It was a super simple list of projects—a design practice (“Fort Home is a design house based on the premise of spreading oneself thin.”), a couple of DJ gigs at restaurants, a couple of architectural renders, links to architectural work and a portfolio, and a handful of apparel projects. Each of these seeds would eventually blossom into a part of his practice.
The early work is most relatable; each of us could have a website with a list of projects like that. It sounds simple enough, and still, I only recently put mine together (just by gathering materials that were already lying around in my inbox, etc.).
Virgil’s work eventually found its way to other platforms, like Instagram and Tumblr, but I still appreciate this small website. It was a sign of things to come. (Oh and it looks so much like UniverseCity!)