Samuel Ross – Kinfolk

Art, fashion, lifestyle: Samuel Ross has seen the future and it’s got his name all over it.
Words by Fedora Abu. Photography by Neil Bedford. Styling by David Nolan. Set Design by Sandy Suffield. Makeup by Lucy Gibson.

He wears a jacket and trousers by ISSEY MIYAKE HOMME PLISSÉ and sneakers by A-COLD-WALL*.

Samuel Ross sees himself first and foremost as an artist. Not in the immaterial, overused sense of the word—but as a good old-fashioned paint-on-canvas artist. In his industrial-style office space in London’s Brutalist cultural center 180 The Strand, he’s offering me a privileged preview of a handful of his paintings in the abstract expressionist vein on his MacBook. Ross is currently in talks with a big-name London gallery about representation, and another has expressed interest in a collaboration of sorts. This latest venture isn’t simply a box to tick on his growing list of creative pursuits. “If it were up to me, I’d be up a mountain in Guangzhou as a lay monk, just painting,” he says. “I’d be on my Frank Bowling vibes.”

But these days, 31-year-old Ross has far too much to be getting on with. Raised at the right hand of the genre-defying Virgil Abloh, he belongs to a class of creatives who flit between mediums while also priding themselves on paying it forward. He debuted his first sculpture in 2019. He’s previously published a zine with Apple and Beats by Dre, plus a retrospective book to commemorate the first anniversary of his design studio, Samuel Ross Associates. This year, he’s partnered with Swiss watchmaker Hublot on a sold-out Big Bang Tourbillon.¹ There’s also the fourth round of his Black British Artist Grants, which provide Black creatives with funding, and, of course, his menswear label, A-Cold-Wall*, which has opened stores in Seoul and Beijing.² If the hours don’t seem to be adding up, it’s because sleep has taken a back seat. “I need to work on that,” he says.

Ross’ admission that his “whole life is centered around work” is at odds with the shifting mood of his generation, which has, in the decade or so he’s been in the design industry, moved away from exalting the side hustle to embracing the “death of ambition” and “quiet quitting,” by way of millennial burnout. But while you might expect someone so highly productive to guard their time fastidiously, no one’s clock-watching when we speak on a muggy Thursday afternoon in late summer.

( 1 ) For Hublot, Ross designed a Big Bang Tourbillon watch in orange smooth rubber and titanium honeycomb mesh, with almost all 282 components visible through the dial. His design was issued in a limited edition of 50 and was priced at over $100,000.

( 2 ) A-Cold-Wall* has ambitious plans for expansion in China. Two new stores are scheduled to open, in Shanghai and Shenzhen, by the end of 2022.

Quickly, it becomes clear that what fuels Ross’ work ethic is a deep-seated urge to leave his mark on all aspects of culture. His ambition for A-Cold-Wall* and his wider design practice is boundless: “The whole idea has always been to have a multitude of things happening simultaneously. It’s not just about fashion—it’s about society. It was always about society. It’s about how we dress. Eventually, it will be about what we ingest and what we eat, about what we put on our skin. It’ll be about how we live and where we live, it’ll be about how we engage with print and literature.”

Ross’ mind moves at warp speed; he theorizes about everything from the decline of feudal systems to the transactional nature of modern-day travel (or “late-capitalist experiences”). At one point, I counter his suggestion that he’s not a writer by pointing out the eloquence of his tribute to Abloh for CNN.³ “I’ll read you some poetry that I wrote recently,” he says, sifting through the piles on his desk. You’re not a writer, but you write poetry? “Yeah, I mean . . . you’ve got to just do things,” he laughs.

If Ross is restless, it’s in part because he believes that people of color, especially, are living through a unique “pocket of time,” even if it’s far from perfect. “This is the most free time people of color have ever had in Western society . . . apart from the Moors,” he says. “This is a time of autonomy, and I want to leverage that time.”

That the window in which to make his mark is narrow has no doubt been brought into sharp relief by the loss of his mentor, “V.”Abloh’s sudden passing unleashed a seismic outpouring of grief from his legions of friends in fashion, media and culture—but Ross belonged to the innermost circle. He brings up Abloh first, and often, always through a lens of reverence and nostalgia. Speaking about their last interaction is the only point during our conversation at which he slows down. He closes his eyes. “When he died, I cried every day for three weeks,” he says. “I haven’t cried that much in my adult life.”

As streetwear legend goes, the pair began their relationship online. A newly graduated product designer, Ross was brought in to Abloh’s fold as an intern, eventually working on Hood by Air, Off-White and Donda.⁴ He’s the baby of a now-canonized crew that also includes Heron Preston, Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo and Alyx founder Matthew Williams (who today heads up Givenchy). Did it feel exciting at the time? “Yes.” And did it feel like you were changing culture? “Yes.”

( 3 ) In an op-ed written for CNN after Abloh’s death in 2021, Ross compared his relationship to the late designer to a Rubik’s Cube. “There were many moving parts and we worked across a multitude of disciplines,” he wrote.

( 4 ) Donda is Kanye West’s creative agency, of which Abloh was named artistic director in 2010. Ross’ job, he wrote in his CNN op-ed, was to ensure that Abloh’s ideas would take shape as renders, sketches, paintings or prototypes—“done with efficiency and always good taste, refinement and nuance.”

He wears a sweater by A-COLD-WALL* and his own vintage robe.

Ross recalls how he, Abloh and Lorenzo were in Copenhagen just before a game-changing sneaker design was due to drop. “I remember all of us just looking at V’s phone and Jerry’s phone and passing the phones around and looking at this piece of footwear, knowing what it meant, knowing what it would do.” Those who question that impact need only look at the streetwear-infused collections of the oldest, haughtiest fashion houses—or the secondary market prices of the collective’s past creations.

Ross’ own menswear label, A-Cold-Wall*, launched in 2014, when he was just 25 years old. When we meet, he’s dressed in a muted outfit of his own creation that’s become a uniform of sorts: paneled ACW* zip-up sweater, matching ACW* sweatpants, and a pair of his ACW* “Hiking Shoe” sneakers. His interest in clothes was always there—though he didn’t consider fashion per se until early adulthood. “It was just style—so tracksuits, puffer jackets. It was more about tribe and belonging.” His first job, at the age of 12, was as a runner at a streetwear store, and by 15 he was selling counterfeit Nikes. These days, those silhouettes from his youth form the bedrock of his collections—and he’s since partnered with Nike on a ready-to-wear collection.

If you were to sum up the Samuel Ross design point of view—what connects a Samuel Ross T-shirt and a Samuel Ross sculpture, for example—you might settle on “Brutalism,” a word that was initially used to describe a specific style of architecture and grew to encompass a whole aesthetic. Ross grew up in concrete housing projects in south London and Northampton, and A-Cold-Wall* was initially pitched as a commentary on class in Britain.⁵ Ross’ famous work ethic isn’t just about a creative urge but also, he says, a fear of poverty. His mother is a painter and teacher and his father had studied fine art at Central Saint Martins, but gently steered him toward its more commercially viable cousin, design. He now lives comfortably between a self-renovated house in Northamptonshire and an apartment in the heart of London. “It’s not even a thing anymore, but I still have it,” he explains.

He recognizes the irony of where he ended up—not just as a member of the “0.01 percent,” but working out of a landmark 1970s Brutalist building, now deemed an emblem of good taste. “It’s very rare that you go from being in the sandbox to talking to the people who tried to design the sandbox. And I got to do that.” But to Ross, Brutalism is “the start of art and design” and the first historical movement that he was drawn to.

He moved in to 180 The Strand while it was still a “shell” and has watched it blossom.⁶ “I need to talk about the magic of this building, because [Supreme’s] Tremaine Emory and Marc Newson were both in here at the same time and we had a beautiful conversation, like, two months ago. That can only happen in 180 The Strand.” The expansive space now houses the Dazed magazine offices; Soho House’s headquarters and one of its members’ clubs; HEATED, an LVMH-backed menswear start-up; and the studios of fellow menswear wunderkinds Priya Ahluwalia and Grace Wales Bonner. Not by chance, Ross sits squarely at the nucleus of London’s creative scene.

( 5 ) The name A-Cold-Wall* is in itself a commentary on the near-impenetrable nature of certain echelons of British society as well as an attempt by Ross to “articulate the textures of the environment I grew up in,” as he put it in an interview with Dazed.

( 6 ) In 2009, 180 The Strand was approved for demolition by then-mayor Boris Johnson. However, in 2012 property developer Mark Wadhwa purchased the vast space and transformed it into a creative hub with studios, offices and exhibition rooms. During the eight years it was under construction, the space was used for events such as London Fashion Week and Frieze Art Fair.

Ross wears a T-shirt by A-COLD-WALL*.

Ross wears a jacket by ISSEY MIYAKE HOMME PLISSÉ.

But 10 years into the game, he’s also keenly aware that what and who is “cool” is constantly shifting—even more so in the realm of streetwear. Shit-hot brands that draw lines around the block today can be cast aside—even derided—tomorrow. “The benefit of youth is that you organically carry the zeitgeist. But once that elixir runs out, then there’s nothing to hide behind. Is the work good? Is the product good? . . . We’ve seen certain trend cycles and perspectives come and go, but the ones that have stayed were never that facile to begin with. They were always going to be there for the long term.”

Ross is confident he’s building something with legs, though—and that longevity will come down to craft. We go back and forth for some time on the very notion of luxury streetwear, and whether the label even fits. Ultimately, he says, A-Cold-Wall*’s ethos is distinct from the printing on “pre-produced goods” that underpins traditional streetwear. “Let’s say we make a new yarn in Portugal, but then we only use Japanese sashiko threading and then we only use mud dye or indigo dye on that jersey, organic jersey.” The jacket he’s wearing is actually made from merino wool; the sneakers, he tells me, are engineered from an eco-leather composite that reacts to heat and changes color. Early on, he and Abloh, who had a background in engineering and architecture, sought to dub their design philosophy “intelligent streetwear . . .and then people got upset with that.” As someone who’s so invested in the nitty-gritty of garment-making, Ross seems perfectly poised to find innovative solutions to fashion’s sustainability and supply chain crises. I want to know how he feels about being part of an industry that’s putting out so much product. “I think about it a lot, and there’s obviously loads of guilt associated with volume and scale, because we do have that,” he says. “We’ve started using a lot less nylon, a lot less polyester. . . . Even changing little things like a synthetic thread to a cotton, tens of thousands of reels of plastic are just taken out of the supply chain.” However, in Ross’ hyperanalytical worldview, it’s not so straightforward: The double standards of Western industrialized economies all of a sudden placing sanctions on materials used in “supplier-based villages” in China, for example. Or smaller companies being made to answer for the conglomerates.

Clearly, Ross is equal parts artist and shrewd CEO, and he cares about growing his business. “Scale is really important if we want to see longstanding brands which come from different perspectives, which deserve to be there,” he says. Being brought up in a household that was so radical and antiestablishment only made the prospect of making money more alluring, even if he takes issue with the capitalist designation. “So many of my behaviors align [with capitalism], but I don’t necessarily agree with that system. I just don’t feel we can afford any more British Caribbeans to lose at the system.” He continues, “I think we need to move forward first in the system, win the system, at least gain more of a voice or a ballot in the system, and then look what our variant of the system might be.”

In short, money is the fuel for his manifesto for change. It’s the reason he can personally bankroll other Black designers to the tune of over £100,000 through Black British Artist Grants—and the reason why living up a mountain with just a paintbrush and some canvases must remain a pipedream. After all, what is a creative visionary without cash flow?

If he were in pursuit of a hefty paycheck, the most obvious next step might be heading up one of the heritage fashion houses, which are no doubt desperate to mine his talent and cultural cachet. As it happens, five have already come knocking. “Four I wasn’t really interested in. One is of interest, but that’s all I can say.” Still, he has qualms about taking that route. “I didn’t do this to get employed. That’s kind of what I mean about when we came up in this projection of what the future of fashion should look like. It wasn’t for a job. The goal was always to build a new type of company.” But, wait: What about Abloh, who famously took the helm of LV Men? “I think for Virgil, when he went, that was exciting. It was meritocracy. It was plurality. But Virgil was a Trojan horse. The clothes, that was just to signal. That was just semantics. He was starting to begin with the wider role, like libraries, churches, the work he did in terms of literature, in terms of lecturing. . . . He was like a Massimo Vignelli.”

Abloh’s legacy looms large and Ross is his most obvious successor at Louis Vuitton (those supersized shoes remain unfilled). But wherever he ends up, he’s not living in his mentor’s shadow; instead, he’s blazing a trail in his own distinctly recognizable design script. Still, being in Ross’ orbit even briefly, I can’t help but recall the often-repeated adage that almost everyone who met the infectiously positive Abloh left feeling incredibly motivated. “Yes, but the thing is the actions followed,” Ross explains. “You’d have the conversation—and then you’d implement it.” What’s left unsaid, of course, is that not everyone has the breadth of talent—nor the sheer energy, frankly—to do so with the same success he has.