THE ART OF SOUND

Devon Turnbull's custom-built speakers can be heard in Supreme stores, at New York's hottest new hotel, and in Mark Ronson's house. But Turnbull's not chasing clout or decibels with his hi-fi audio gear he's offering an entirely different approach to the listening experience.

- NOAH NOSNHOR

ONE DAY IN March 2020, just as New York City was sliding into lockdown, Devon Turnbull got a cryptic text message from his friend Virgil Abloh. "I didn't even get it at first," Turnbull tells me over lunch this summer. "He's like, 'Your time is now. You're about to blow up.' I was just like, really?"

For Turnbull, 43, who had been working for several years in relative obscurity building high-fidelity home-audio equipment under the creative pseudonym Ojas, the impetus for Abloh's prophecy remains a mystery. "I don't know if that was just based purely on his insane level of foresight and his ability as a visionary," says Turnbull streetwear with his brand Off-White and reinvented Louis Vuitton as the brand's men's artistic director, but Turnbull couldn't be sure. "It could have just as easily been that he was on some fucking LVMH company trend-forecaster marketing thing and people were like, 'Home audio is about to become huge."" Either way, Abloh's message was clear: Your moment is about to come.