Time announced its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world on Thursday, and it includes only two people from the fashion world: womenswear designer Christian Siriano, and new Louis Vuitton designer Virgil Abloh.

Think of the selections as a sort of compass: they tell us who stands out in the world of style, seen from the hundred-mile view. Siriano is the all-inclusive designer who made a red carpet dress for SNL comedian Leslie Jones, who wrote Siriano's Time blurb, when other designers weren’t stepping up. Abloh’s inclusion on the list, meanwhile, speaks to something a little different. For close to a decade now, high fashion has been swerving in the direction of streetwear. The change is now registering in such a large way that Time is recognizing the shift—and positioning Abloh at the forefront of the movement.

Designers have made Time’s list before: former J.Crew executive Jenna Lyons, in 2013; former Céline designer Phoebe Philo, in 2014, along with new Burberry designer Riccardo Tisci; and Guo Pei, the Chinese designer behind Rihanna’s Met Gala gown, in 2016. Their cases were pretty cut-and-dry: Lyons brought well-designed clothes to the masses, Tisci was hailed as the designer of the moment, and Guo Pei made a thunderous statement with her canary yellow dress. Abloh stands for something greater: he’s symbolic of a whole seachange in the fashion industry, where sneakers are suddenly the most covetable style objects on the planet, Supreme is a CFDA award nominee, and fashion conglomerate LVMH puts serious money into the sneaker consignors at Stadium Goods.

Artist Takashi Murakami, an Abloh collaborator who made the case for the designer in Time, wrote, “Kids’ fervor for the stripe patterns and arrow marks he created for his fashion label, Off-White, is not a passing trend; rather, it shows how Virgil’s young followers, with their unclouded eyes, have been seeing right into the core of his creativity all along.” Significantly, Virgil’s fans aren’t just kids anymore—they include the higher-ups at LVMH, who installed him atop Louis Vuitton.

At LV, Abloh will have the chance to push those “stripe patterns and arrow marks,” and to continue to dress an entire generation of Instagram-dominating celebrity. Abloh’s proven through his own runway shows, where kids line up by the hundreds, that he can bring a youthful exuberance even to the fussy world of fashion, and through Off-White’s omnipresence in NBA locker rooms and on red carpets that it’s not just kids’ stuff. And all of this doesn’t even mention that Abloh is a black designer in a world of luxury fashion that is still painfully white—that alone is revolutionary. We can practically hear the grumbles from quote-unquote Fashion People about Abloh, whose command of pure design has been criticized before, making this list. But it’s hard to discount the mainstream recognition he’s earned—and at this point, you'd have to be crazy to bet against him.

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