Artist, architect, engineer, designer, musician, DJ, chief creative director Virgil Abloh has died to cardiac angiosoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer, it has been announced.
The 41-year-old, who was CEO to his own streetwear label Off-White as well as the head creative at Louis Vuitton was said to have been battling the disease for two years in private.
“We are devastated to announce the passing of our beloved Virgil Abloh,” wrote a post on his official Instagram account. “He chose to endure his battle privately since his diagnosis in 2019, undergoing numerous challenging treatments, all while helming several significant institutions that span fashion, art, and culture.
“Through it all, his work ethic, infinite curiosity, and optimism never wavered. Virgil was driven by his dedication to his craft and to his mission to open doors for others and create pathways for greater equality in art and design. He often said, ‘Everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself,’ believing deeply in the power of art to inspire future generations.”
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The modern fashion designer at Off-White
As far as fashion design goes, Abloh only entered the scene less than 10 years ago, in 2012. Initially trained as an architect, he redefined the idea of the modern fashion designer by embracing a wide breadth of design in all its aspects, from music, visual art, furniture design and more, adding them to his arsenal as an artist.
His first design under his first company Pyrex Vision, launched in 2012, would be the one that set the tone for what is to come. He bought deadstock clothing from Ralph Lauren, screen printed on them in a postmodern art stun crossover with a fashion piece and sold them upwards of $550. He closed the company down a year later citing the reason that he did not intend for it to be a commercial enterprise as much as an artistic experiment and continued on this spirit of blurring lines between commercial fashion and street rebelliousness.
He founded Off-White in 2013, launching with a logo inspired by Ben Kelly. Working out of Milan, Virgil explained the label as being “the grey area between black and white as the colour off-white” to investors and critics. He drew a majority of his inspirations from the brand from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s floating glass home, Farnsworth House and presented it with references to the Baroque artist Carravagio and German design artist The Bauhaus.
With it, he tried to make high fashion and haute couture more accessible and, more importantly, relatable, by collaborating with everyone from Nike to Ikea, Evian to Mercedes-Benz, bringing the beauty of fashion into fields and industries never before pollinated by it
During the rise in neo-nationalism in 2017 Abloh worked with conceptual artist Jenny Holzer to create a line emphasizing the positive aspects of immigration, cultural integration, and globalisation. In December 2017, he worked with Holzer again to design T-shirts for Planned Parenthood in response to the Women’s March on Washington.
By the end of 2018, Off-White sales index and consumer sentiments ranked it as the hottest label in the world, surpassing Gucci.
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First Black menswear designer at Louis Vuitton
Virgil was named artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear ready-to-wear in March 2018, a role that is doubly iconic because he sits as the first person of African descent to lead the brand’s menswear line, as well as one of the few Black designers at the helm of the French fashion house.
Upon his acceptance of the position, he stated, “It is an honour for me to accept this position. I find the heritage and creative integrity of the house are key inspirations and will look to reference them both while drawing parallels to modern times”.
Abloh showed his first collection for Louis Vuitton at the 2018 Men’s Fashion Week at the Palais-Royal Gardens in Paris. Rihanna was the first person to wear Abloh before the show, in which Playboi Carti, Steve Lacy, A$AP Nast, Dev Hynes, and Kid Cudi walked. Abloh has since been in high demand for his designs, creating an original outfit designed for Serena Williams to wear throughout the 2018 US Open, a collaboration with Nike.
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Art, Music, Design
It wasn’t just fashion in which he shone. Abloh was a big fan of music, particularly rap, and lent his talent to the arena by designing covers for Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, as well as Kanye and Jay-Z’s joint album Watch the Throne. Kanye once said of Virgil: ““I have all these ideas and Virgil is able to architect them because he is an actual architect.” Virgil also had a hand in the covers for the albums of Pop Smoke, Westside Gunn, Octavian and Lil Uzi Vert.
Virgil also worked closely and frequently with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who gave him a solo art show in his Kaikai Kiki art gallery in Tokyo. Their artwork has been showcased together numerous times in places as large as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and nooks as quaint as Murakami’s shop Oz Ingaro in Tokyo.
Virgil had his first solo museum art exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in 2019 with the Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech, which travelled to the High Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and the Brooklyn Museum.
His love for music led him to start DJing at house parties throughout high school and college. He is said to be influenced by A-Trak, Benji B and Gilles Peterson. This interest would go on to gain him at international shows, among them Hi Ibiza and Tomorrowland 2019. He would also go on to release a few singles, own DJ residency at Las Vegas nightclubs, and continue on his first calling – designing – by lending his eye to consoles as well as album covers.
Artist, architect, engineer, designer, musician, DJ, chief creative director died on 28 November 2021 after a two-year private battle with cardiac angiosarcoma. He passed in Chicago, where he resided with his wife and two children, at the age of 41.
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