Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton’s first black artistic director who brought the street to the catwalk, dies age 41
- Abloh died on Sunday with few aware that he had been battling a rare form of cancer, cardiac angiosarcoma, since 2019
- Abloh’s partnership with Kanye West catapulted him from the skate and DJ culture of Chicago to the heights of the fashion world
Virgil Abloh reimagined the profile of a fashion designer, merging streetwear, music and high fashion, and shattering glass ceilings as the first black creative director at Louis Vuitton.
Abloh died on Sunday at the age of 41, with few aware that he had been battling a rare form of cancer, cardiac angiosarcoma, since 2019.
His partnership with Kanye West catapulted Abloh from the skate and DJ culture of Chicago to the heights of the fashion world, first with his own red-hot label Off-White, and then to the apex of the traditional luxury industry in Paris.
His cancer diagnosis came just a year after he was appointed as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton, becoming the first black person to take an artistic director role at a top French fashion house.
That did not stop him maintaining a gruelling schedule as he remoulded the label in his image, merging streetwear, social media and celebrity – while also moonlighting as a DJ and a furniture designer for Ikea.
“Everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself,” he was often quoted as saying, as he pulled in the influences from his youth to breathe new life into the catwalk.
Abloh, the son of Ghanaian immigrants, studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, but his career took a surprising turn after his design ideas caught the attention of West, who hired him as his creative director in 2007.