In Celebration of Virgil Abloh, the Designer Who Redefined a Generation of Fashion In Just a Decade

Artist, Architect, Archetype-breaker – Virgil Abloh’s impact will live on long after his passing.

Designer Virgil Abloh at the end of the Off-White men's Spring/Summer 2020 show

The fashion world was devastated by the news of Virgil Abloh’s recent passing on November 28. The 41-year-old entrepreneur and designer had been privately fighting cardiac angiosarcoma – a rare and aggressive cancer – since 2019. However, apart from a brief doctor-prescribed period of rest due to ‘exhaustion’ in 2019 and a handful of industry insider rumblings, there were no signs the Illinois-born son of Ghanaian immigrants, who was known for his tireless work ethic, was slowing down.

In fact, until the end, Abloh’s relentless creativity and frenetic pace didn’t let up. Founding his Off-White label in 2012, he stepped into the role of artistic director at LVMH in 2018, a historic appointment that granted him creative control over the luxury conglomerate’s portfolio of 75 brands. At the same time, Abloh showcased his art and design work at his touring Figures of Speech museum exhibit, and was often spotted moonlighting as a DJ at some of the world’s hottest venues from Chicago to Paris.

Virgil Abloh at the Louis Vuitton Menswear SS20 show as part of Paris Fashion Week, via Getty

Illinois to the Palais-Royale: The remarkable rise of Virgil Abloh

Abloh first gained notoriety in 2009 thanks to a widely-circulated photo that showed him as part of Kanye West’s crew at Paris Fashion Week. Off the back of that, he interned with West at Fendi, earning $500 a month and learning the ins and outs of high fashion with absolute reverence. After his stint at Fendi, he became creative director at West’s Donda incubator in 2010, and was a founding father of DJ collective Been Trill in 2012. Been Trill morphed into Pyrex Vision, Abloh’s first real clothing endeavor where he took deadstock – oversized flannels from Ralph Lauren – and applied his personal brand of irony, screen-printing ‘23’ – Michael Jordan’s number – on them. Pyrex Vision then became Off-White, the ubiquitous brand that rocketed Abloh to global acclaim with its iconic Helvetica text branding, quotation marks and hazard-tape yellow.

Kanye West (third from right) and Virgil Abloh (far right) at Paris Fashion Week 2009, via @tommyton on Instagram

Designer Virgil Abloh at the Off-White men's Spring/Summer 2020 show, via Getty

Off-White was quickly pigeon-holed by onlookers as a high-end streetwear line, but Abloh rejected that definition. “I was adamant: [Off-White] isn’t a streetwear brand. This isn’t a contemporary brand,’ he told GQ. “This is designer, just the same way that X, Y, Z are designer, where you say their name and it carries this whole esteem and emotion to it.” The label began showing in Paris, Abloh was named a finalist for the LVMH prize for young designers in 2015, and his eye for bypassing fashion’s old guard and connecting directly with consumers caught the eye of LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, who called him “a man with a beautiful soul and great wisdom”.

Abloh’s superhero-like ability to shatter seemingly every glass ceiling in the fashion industry – along with his bold designs and collaborations – shook up the world of fashion on what seemed like a monthly basis. The most notable of these collabs may have been his work with Nike, Jordan Brand and Converse on ‘The Ten’, a collection of ten silhouettes split into ‘Revealing’ and ‘Ghosting’ design inspirations that featured everything from the Air Jordan 1 to the Air VaporMax. Never before had Nike allowed a collaborative partner to tinker with classic shoes to such an extent.

Scenes from Abloh's first-ever show for Louis Vuitton Menswear Spring/Summer 2019, via Getty

He presented his first runway show with Louis Vuitton at Paris’ Palais-Royale Gardens in June 2018. With rainbow-coloured garments and accessories, plus a 200-metre long rainbow runway inspired by the Wizard of Oz, the collection was truly a dream come true for Abloh, the third Black man to lead a major Paris fashion house. At the end of the show, a sobbing Abloh embraced a similarly teary-eyed Kanye West – two Chicago kids who’d made it to the highest echelons of fashion, redefining every rule in the book along the way. After the runway show, Abloh kept on churning, establishing a million-dollar “Post-Modern” scholarship to encourage and support Black fashion students. Even as he was hospitalised in recent weeks, he reportedly still planned to head to Miami for the next show.

Virgil Abloh backstage after the Off-White Menswear Fall/Winter 21, Paris Fashion Week, via Getty

Abloh’s impact will live on long after his passing. He did more than just erase the lines between streetwear and high fashion – through hard work, persistence and an eye toward inclusivity, he also rewrote the rules of who participates. “There are people around this room who look like me,” he told The New York Times. “You never saw that before in fashion. The people have changed, and so fashion had to.”

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