The fashion world mourns the loss of designer Virgil Abloh. The American died of cancer at the age of only 41. “It is with great dismay that we announce the death of our beloved Virgil Abloh, who has been a loyal father, husband, son, brother and friend to us. He leaves behind his loving wife Shannon Abloh, his children Lowe Abloh and Gray Abloh, his sister Edwina Abloh, his parents Nee and Eunice Abloh as well as numerous dear friends and colleagues, “reads a post on the fashion designer’s Instagram page.
Abloh fought against a rare, aggressive form of cancer, angiosarcoma of the heart, for over two years. “Since his diagnosis in 2019, he has chosen to wage his fight privately and undergo numerous difficult treatments while simultaneously running several major institutions in the fields of fashion, art and culture.”
Abloh’s fashion career began in 2009 at the side of Kanye West when he received an internship at the traditional Italian brand Fendi in Rome. He had previously studied civil engineering and completed his master’s degree in architecture, before that he had learned to sew from his mother and played DJ Flat White on his weekends.
Abloh and West liked and valued each other, they worked together on various follow-up projects. During this time, Abloh met the CEO of Louis Vuitton, Michael Burke. In 2012, Abloh founded his first company, Pyrex Vision. His concept was simple but effective: he bought Champion clothes for little money, printed them with his own designs, and resold them for $ 500 a piece. He called it an “artistic experiment”.
“Virgil Abloh. Nike. ICONS”, Taschen Verlag, hardcover, Swiss brochure, 352 pages. English. 60 euro. Can be ordered here.
© Taschen Verlag / Manufacturer
A lightning career followed
In 2013 he founded a “real company”, his label Off-White, under which he produced streetwear that bore his “signature”: Abloh used characters and punctuation in an unconventional way and often gave things a name. Then in 2018 everything suddenly happened very quickly: he was just the first descendant of Afro-American parents to be appointed artistic director of menswear at the classic French fashion label Louis Vuitton, when “Time” magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the world. One of the reasons for this is likely to be that Abloh had achieved a unique balancing act: the American linked the American hip-hop world with the extravaganza of European haute couture.
Documentation of the project “The Ten”
In the illustrated book “Virgil Abloh. Nike. ICONS”, which was published this year by Taschen Verlag, Abloh devoted himself to a single brand that symbolizes his generation: Nike. Like a surgeon, the designer cut cult shoe after cult shoe and gave them a new look. The collaboration with Nike began in 2017. “The Ten” was the name of the project that sneaker fans all over the world were following with excitement, because ten of the manufacturer’s classics were originally supposed to be dismantled by Abloh and given a new design. The collection was sold out – it was and is still being sold at the highest prices. The sneakers can be easily recognized by the cable ties with text, which Abloh also used for his own sneaker designs. By the end of 2020, other designs followed, beyond The Ten, as the illustrated book records.
While almost two thirds of the page-free book can do with almost no text, the last third provides a lexicon for Abloh fans. Words, places, brands and names that played a role in his life are explained and related to the designer. As if by the way, the reader learns what the cable ties are all about, which marathon runner Abloh gave a pair of Nike Zoom Fly to which Nike shoe in Abloh design made it to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and what the word was handmade meant for him.
“Virgil Abloh. Nike. ICONS” is in April 2021 Taschen Verlag published and costs 60 euros.