A costume designer needs many things to put together the fashion aesthetic for a TV series or film: copious amounts of fabric, vast closets full of gorgeous outfits, scissors and thread, to name a few. For Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi’s animated special Entergalactic, however, none of those things were needed — but a costume designer was still essential. “I needed to approach this like this was live action, in a sense, because I wanted to move like it was live action, with the characters having different outfits and all these things,” Mescudi tells Tudum. So, in order to get the job done (and the clothes right) he turned to a personal friend: the late, great fashion icon, Virgil Abloh.

Virgil Abloh's Fashion Influence in 'Entergalactic'

“Virgil has been a really huge inspiration for me,” Mescudi says of the former Louis Vuitton artistic director. “Just since I met him, he’s always been that big bro that I admired, and when it came time to do Entergalactic, I knew that, in order for us to have the freshness — the freshest level that I wanted — I had to hire someone who was just focused on wardrobe.” 

While Entergalactic’s title is inspired by the metaphysical realm, Abloh took inspiration from his own outfits for the project. “[We] would meet with him over Zoom and just talk about each of the characters, where we’re seeing them, what are the settings — is it day, is it night, what sort of locations are they going to?” director Fletcher Moules remembers. “And then, he would shoot back a PDF of just outfits either from his wardrobe, from his runaway, other things that he had done, that would be right.”

Translating these real-life clothes into animation meant bringing Abloh’s designs into Entergalactic’s specific frame of reference. “We had to interpret those photos with our artists on our team, into our animation style,” Moules says. “So then, that’d be like, well, how do you cut that? What’s that silhouette look like in our art style?” 

Virgil Abloh's Fashion Influence in 'Entergalactic'

Entergalactic paints a stylized portrait of a vibrant New York City, but the tactility of its design makes it feel incredibly real. That choice gave the characters their own distinct personality, somehow escaping the realm of animation altogether. “You become immersed in this world with the colors, you forget that you’re watching animation,” says executive producer Kenya Barris. And that’s, in part, possible because of the care Abloh took with the fashion, making these outfits reach a new level of animated costume design.  

When Abloh died in late 2021 after a two-year battle with cancer, the production was blindsided by the tremendous loss. But, amidst the sorrow, they also felt gratitude. “What a blessing,” Barris says. “We didn’t know what was going on [with Abloh] at the time, but to have him bless us with becoming part of his legacy… it meant everything.” 

Entergalactic is streaming now on Netflix.