The Archive of Everything
Creativity isn’t always loud.
This was written in March, but I never hit the publish
Lately, I’ve felt this urge to put my thoughts down. Maybe to make sense of them, maybe just to honor them. I turned 38 a few weeks ago, and something about this moment feels important. I can’t quite explain it. It’s not some big milestone, but it's more like I’m stepping into something new. Something that deserves to be remembered.
Virgil Abloh understood that feeling. He moved through the world like a collector of moments. Scribbled notes, rough sketches, screenshots, and receipts were all part of something bigger. He found beauty in unfinished ideas, in fragments that felt random at first but ended up telling a story. He didn’t just design clothes or sneakers. He built an archive of thoughts. A kind of living proof that creativity isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s quiet. Sometimes, it’s in the little things we decide to keep.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot. What I keep, what I forget, what only makes sense when I look back later. Virgil treated ideas like artifacts, like time capsules. He understood that creativity isn’t just about what you make. It’s about how you care for the process. How you protect even the tiniest spark of a thought because you never know what it might grow into.
In a world that worships polished outcomes, Virgil reminded us that the process matters just as much. His Off-White designs, with their quotation marks and zip ties, were like little nudges saying, “This isn’t finished. And that’s okay.” His notebooks, filled with half-formed thoughts and messy margins, showed us that inspiration doesn’t always show up in big, dramatic ways. Sometimes, it’s hiding in the chaos. Sometimes, it’s in the mess we overlook.
And I can’t help but wonder. How many ideas have I let go too soon? How many times did I brush off a passing thought because it felt incomplete? How many things did I promise myself I’d remember… and didn’t? Virgil made space for the unfinished. He believed that every idea, no matter how small or fractured, was worth revisiting. Nothing is ever really wasted if you give it time to evolve.
His work was a love letter to the in-between. He didn’t rush to tie things up with a neat bow. He embraced the draft, the prototype, the version that wasn’t quite there yet. That’s where the magic lived. In the tension between “not yet” and “almost.”
I’m learning to move that way, too. To stop waiting for everything to feel perfect before I start. To hold onto the ideas that don’t make sense yet. To let thoughts linger. Some of them are meant to be rediscovered later when I’m ready to see them differently.
Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to documenting this moment in my life. Not because I know what it means but because I want to remember that it happened. I want to treat it like something worth archiving.
Virgil had a way of noticing what most people ignored. Street signs, construction materials, and the way a font played with space. He reminded us that design isn’t just about what we create. It’s about what we see. That’s a lesson I want to carry forward. To pay better attention. I want to stop waiting for inspiration to arrive fully formed and instead recognize that it’s already around me, tucked inside the little things I’m drawn to keep.
Maybe that’s Virgil’s most significant legacy. Not just the fashion or the big-name collaborations but the mindset. The invitation to see more. To treat every fleeting idea like it matters. Because it might, one day.
Virgil once said, “Everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself.” I think that’s what this is, too. Writing things down. Remembering. Leaving a trail for the future version of me. A way to look back and say, “This is where I was. This is what I loved. This is what felt important, even if I didn’t know why yet.”
So here I am, putting it all down. Thought by thought. One moment at a time. Because one day, I’ll look back and see it for what it really was. A blueprint in the making.
And something tells me that’s exactly what Virgil would’ve wanted.
Until next time,
Stay bold, stay brilliant, and remember, as Jay-Z says, You could be anywhere in the world, but you're here with me. I appreciate that!
-Shadé