I think that in the other sort of parts of the culture, writing, space, or music, even film, theater, have been a lot more open to new voices, younger voices, voices of color than even the art world is today. Still right now.

From the Ted Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

For 18 years, Debbie Millman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on.

On this episode, Curator and Art Writer Antoine Sargent talks about his career and about the late great Virgil Abloh.

What he had to do is redesign the world to meet him where he was at.

In recent years, there's been an explosion of interest in art made by black Americans.

At or very near the center of this explosion is Antoine Sargent. He's a writer, an editor, and a Curator. He is written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Art in America, and his books include the New Black Vanguard, photography between art and fashion.

One of his recent projects is a show featuring the work of the fashion designer Virgil Abloh at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

He's here to talk about that, about contemporary black photography and art, and about his career as a writer and Curator. Antoine Sargent, welcome to Design Matters.

Hey, Debbie, thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Antoine, I read that you don't really believe in seasonal style, but you do have one sartorial rule.

Give a look and always wear a matching hat. So I want to talk about your hats. When did you first start wearing them?

I started first wearing hats maybe five or six years ago. I started with this wide brim hat, wool hat, black hat.

From a brand called Westerlyn, then I got a white one from Westerlyn, and then I stopped making them.

And so I had to sort of figure out something else. And there's a designer, hat designer who lives in New York,

but it's from Chicago, like I am named Rodney Patterson, runs a brand called Essential, and he's been making my hats for the last several years.

I wear a style that he makes called the Russian cuff hat. It's made actually from this sort of Japanese paper.

And so it's actually a paper hat, then sort of it rains or whatever, sweat or whatever.

So I get them sort of remade every now and again, and I sort of mostly wear one that's off white.

You know, I slowly started to shape whole entire sort of outfits and my aesthetic around this hat.

And so I wear a lot of browns and things that can sort of match the hat.

And because it's basically white, it sort of can go, it's versatile, goes with anything.

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