VIRGIL ABLOH, A DESIGNER MAVERICK, DIES AT 41

Virgil Abloh, a renowned fashion designer who was the first person of color to serve as an executive at a major luxury goods group and one of the first people of color to design a luxury label, died from cancer yesterday.

He was only 41 and had been privately been battling the disease for the past two years.

The founder of his own highly successful streetwear brand Off-White, which began as a label named Pyrex Vision in 2012, he was named the artistic director of menswear for Louis Vuitton in March 2018 by parent company LVMH. This past July, he took on an additional and bigger role with the luxury powerhouse – advising its more than 80 Wine & Spirits and Hospitality brands –  after it acquired a 60 percent stake in Off-White.

He continued to serve in all three roles up until his death.

Not a formally trained designer, Abloh studied civil engineering undergrad and received a master’s in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology. The son of Ghanaian immigrants, he was born in Rockford, Illinois in 1980.

His foray into the fashion world began at the age of 22 when he met Kanye West and joined his creative team to help realize West’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton on a sneaker. West named him creative director of Donda, his creative business branch, in 2010. There he met two others and two years later the three launched a DJ and creative collective that would eventually become Off-White.

“We are all shocked after this terrible news. Virgil was not only a genius designer, a visionary, he was also a man with a beautiful soul and great wisdom,” LVMH tweeted in response to the news.

A true creative maverick whose work also spanned DJing and furniture design (he recently collaborated with Ikea), he is survived by his wife Shannon Abloh, his children Lowe Abloh and Grey Abloh, his sister Edwina Abloh and his parents.

His contributions to the world of fashion will undoubtedly survive him as well.

RIP.