Virgil Abloh at Auction

Virgil Abloh redefined a generation of designers and fashion addicts. He elevated streetwear to the lofty realm of luxury fashion, and he changed the face of what it meant to be Black in the world of fashion. As a leading designer, Abloh helped to lay the foundations for other designers of colour. His impressive career encompassed more than just fashion though. Referring to himself as a ‘maker‘ rather than a ‘designer’, Abloh’s legacy is multifaceted. Often compared to the great artist of the 70s and 80s, Willi Smith, Abloh’s talents exceeded the world of textiles. To him, clothes were more than just garments, they were totems that sat at the intersection of everything he worked on; art, politics, music. He utterly altered the way audiences think of and interact with fashion.

Abloh’s Early Life and Career

Born in 1980 to Ghanaian parents, Abloh began his life in Illinois. Despite what you may assume, Abloh didn’t begin his career in fashion. Although his mother was a seamstress who taught him to sew, he decided to study civil engineering at University. However, it is rumoured that on the day of his graduation, he instead went to meet with Kanye West’s manager at the time – John Monopoly.

It was not long after his graduation that West and Abloh began to work together professionally. Abloh, in his early 20s, joined Fendi in Rome alongside West as interns. Both men have talked a lot about their time at Fendi. West in particular recalls how they “didn’t do sh*t“. For $500 a month, they made coffee runs, and photocopies, and didn’t even touch an item of clothing. However, both men say it was worth it as they were simply happy to “have a keycard“. West often jokes that the pair mostly spent their time on Photoshop, earning Abloh the nickname the “fastest Photoshop artist“. Not long after their partnership at Fendi, West invited Abloh to join his creative agency Donda as creative director.

Off-White

While still working for West at Donda, Abloh launched his own company called Pyrex Vision in 2012. He purchased $40 deadstock Ralph Lauren shirts, which he then reprinted to sell for $550 each. The company was short-lived, however, as he never intended it to be a commercial business – just an artistic experiment. In 2013 he reimagined the company into Off-White – his first fashion house. Vogue describes the company as combining ideas of “streetwear, luxury, art, music, and travel“. Virgil Abloh himself says that the name refers to “the grey area between black and white as the colour Off-White”. He always stood by the belief that Off-White is not a luxury fashion brand, he said his designs were for “the tourist and the purist“. By 2018 Off-White ranked as the hottest label, overtaking Gucci.

Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton

In 2018 Virgil Abloh was appointed the artist director of men’s collections at Louis Vuitton. He was the first African-American man to hold this position in the company’s 164-year history. He showed his first collection that same year at Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. Quickly, he grew in popularity, his designs becoming highly sought after.

Although he continued to primarily work with Louis Vuitton, he maintained his own enterprises and collaborated with many different brands and companies such as Rimowa, Nike, SSENSE, and even IKEA to create a furniture range. Clearly, he has an impressive résumé.

However, his career was not without controversies. One of Virgil’s core philosophies, when it came to design, was that any new design could be created simply by changing as little as 3% of an original design. This kind of philosophy has its roots in the conceptual art movement of the early 20th century. Abloh himself referred to his approach as “ironic detachment”. This mentality firmly situates him as an anti-establishment thinker – someone who wanted to change the traditional way we think about art and culture. However, this ideology led to some criticism as some people accused him of plagiarism. This did not phase Abloh. He particularly admired the artist Marcel Duchamp, finding common ground in the belief that creativity did not always need to spring from a blank page. One of his ‘catchphrases’ when people accused him of copying was – “Duchamp is my lawyer“.

In late 2021, Virgil Abloh unfortunately passed away from a rare form of cancer called cardiac angiosarcoma. He had kept his diagnosis private for the two years prior to his passing, continuing to work through it. By his death, Abloh was considered to have been one of the most influential Black designers.

Louis Vuitton by Virgil Abloh at Auction

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