Top 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.
Virgil Abloh, an American Born the son of a Ghanaian immigrant. Later he became the highest-profile Black designer. He worked as DJ and visual artist and he is working at Vuitton since March 2018. He is also a founder of the luxury Italian streetwear brand, Off-White.
“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.
Abloh and Ye became interns at Fendi in Rome, and by 2010, Abloh was working as creative director for Ye’s creative agency, Donda. He also designed album covers for Ye’s Yeezus and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
His arrival at LVMH in 2018 marked the marriage between streetwear and high-end fashion influenced by graffiti art, hip hop and skateboard culture.
Inputs from Reuters
