Virgil Abloh, the fashion designer, known for his extensive collaborations with artists, as well as having his own solo museum shows, has died.
At an internship at Fendi in 2009 Abloh met Kanye West, a fellow apprentice. The pair began to collaborate, and their work together was the seed for the founding of Abloh’s Off-White brand three years later. In 2011, Abloh also acted as artistic director to Watch the Throne, West’s album with Jay-Z.
West was instrumental in introducing Abloh to Takashi Murakami. Having originally trained as an architect, citing the restlessness of the Bauhaus as inspiration, Abloh refused to be defined by disciplinary boundaries, moving fluidly from fashion to art. He first collaborated with the Japanese artist at Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki art gallery in Tokyo, before their work was shown across Gagosian Gallery’s outposts in London, Paris and Beverly Hills in 2018.
Abloh’s first solo museum, a survey of his art, fashion and design, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago a year later, before travelling to the High Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and the Brooklyn Museum. Earlier this month a restaged Figures of Speech opened at Qatar Museums.
In 2018 Abloh was made creative director of Louis Vuitton, the first Black American to take such a position at a Paris fashion house. His appointment was credited as achieving a 20 percent growth in sales the following year.
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