Virgil Abloh, a Disruptor and Leader at Off-White and Louis Vuitton, Has Died

The reveal of the first Off-White collection in 2014 coincided with a broader shift in the currents of fashion. Responding, at first slowly, to shifting consumer desires that proved difficult to rationalize against established luxury clothing categories, houses had started tentatively offering sneakers. But a generation that habitually wore sneakers and rarely considered tailoring increasingly demanded more—they wanted ‘streetwear.’ By showing pure streetwear in a fashion show context Abloh’s Off-White breached the dam between fashion’s ivory tower and the street’s more inverted forms of sneakerhead discernment. In 2015 Off-White was nominated for the LVMH Prize and by 2018, when greater seismic shifts in the menswear sector led to a four-house creative reshuffle, Abloh was championed by Kim Jones to take over the job at Louis Vuitton. Alongside Olivier Rousteing at Balmain, he duly became only one of two Black designers in the leading design role at a Parisian house.

That sunny afternoon show on June 21, 2018, was held on a rainbow runway and distinctly felt like a watershed moment in fashion—which it was. After he took his bow, Abloh and West exchanged an ecstatic hug. As Vogue Runway reported: “The last look was a metallic silver poncho with “Follow the Yellow Brick” written on a breast patch. When he posted a picture of that moment on his Instagram, the caption read, “You can do it too.”

Virgil Abloh was born September 30, 1980, and died on November 28, 2021. He is survived by his wife Shannon, and children Lowe, 8, and Grey, 5 as well as his parents Nee and Eunice and sister Edwina.