World-acclaimed fashion designer, Virgil Abloh, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection, died on Sunday at the age of 41 from cancer, the fashion and luxury house’s French owner LVMH has announced.
Abloh, the American-born son of Ghanaian immigrants who became fashion’s highest-profile Black designer, also worked as a DJ and visual artist and had been at Vuitton since March 2018.
He also founded the Italian luxury streetwear label Off-White, in which LVMH took a 60 percent stake earlier this year, and was a former collaborator with rapper and fashion designer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.
“We are all shocked by this terrible news,” LVMH chief executive Bernard Arnault said in a statement.
“Virgil was not only a genius designer, a visionary, but also a man with a beautiful soul and great wisdom.”
Born in 1980 near Chicago, Abloh and his sister were brought up in Rockford, Illinois. According to a 2018 Vogue magazine profile, his mother Eunice Abloh, a seamstress, taught him the basics of the craft at a young age.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he completed a master’s degree in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
His arrival at LVMH in 2018 marked the marriage between streetwear and high-end fashion influenced by graffiti art, hip hop and skateboard culture.
The designer addressed environmental and social issues in his work with Louis Vuitton, with anti-racist and anti-homophobia messages at his January show in Paris.
Abloh said earlier this year he planned to use his partnership with LVMH “to expand opportunities for diverse individuals and foster greater equity and inclusion in the industries we serve”.
