“VIRGIL WAS HERE”

Virgil was here. And he made his presence felt. In the wake of his premature death, we look back at the artistic genius that was Virgil Abloh.

When, in March 2018, Louis Vuitton named Virgil Abloh as its artistic director of menswear, it completed the revolutionary designer’s remarkable ascent to the top of the fashion world.

More broadly, it legitimised the youth culture and streetwear that Abloh had devoted his life to. Any doubt over whether sneakers and hoodies belonged on the runways of Paris, Milan, New York and London evaporated when the world’s most prestigious fashion house entrusted a 37-year old black man from Chicago to drive them into the future.

But Abloh’s creative genius had been shaping modern culture for nearly a decade before Louis Vuitton gave him the reins.

His self-founded fashion brand, Off-White, expanded the horizons for what a fashion company could be through diverse collaborations with some of the most recognisable brands and faces in the world. Nike, Ikea, Levi’s, Kith and Evian all worked with Abloh and Off-White. So did Takashi Murakami and Serena Williams.

While the nature of the collaborations varied, they were unified by Abloh’s signature quotation marks.

Regardless of whether or not the quotation marks actually contained Virgil’s name, they became his signature. Much in the same way an artist signs their work, Virgil’s own personal touch was left on each of his designs. Seemingly unrelated products such as shoes, suitcases, doormats and dresses all came together between Abloh’s distinctive ”    “.

And like any good artist’s signature, Abloh’s tag became synonymous with quality. The price of the work graced with those unmistakable quotation marks rose exponentially, while their sheer simplicity allowed Abloh to replicate them time and again.

Incorporating text also catapulted Virgil himself into the realm of fine art – his blend of word and design is somehow reminiscent of another pioneering African-American artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Both share an almost childish simplicity to their work – thought provoking, unique and universally accessible – it toes the line between counterculture and mainstream success. Abloh’s debut exhibition, Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech, first appeared in 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, before travelling to the High Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Part of understanding Abloh’s talent comes in realising his life was not a steady trajectory to the top of the artistic world. He first studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin, before doing a masters in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

It was only in 2009 that Abloh moved into fashion. He travelled to Rome to intern for Fendi, where he worked alongside a certain Kanye West. Here, he first caught on the eye of Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke, who lauded Abloh’s ability “to create a metaphor and a new vocabulary to describe something as old-school as Fendi.”

West and Abloh, who had met before in Chicago, formed a close relationship while working at Fendi and the latter became the director of West’s creative agency, Donda. He was then credited with the art direction behind Watch the Throne ­– Kanye West and Jay-Z’s revered 2011 collaborative album. For his work on Watch the Throne, Abloh earned a Grammy nomination, and he went on design the album cover for West’s 2013 album, Yeezus.

His work with Kanye was not his only foray into music. A budding DJ since his teenage years, he released his first single in 2018 and has performed hundreds of shows and events in clubs across the world.

In the wake of Abloh’s death, one of the most staggering realisations has been the sheer breadth of art he was involved in. It begs the question: where did he find the time?

Frank Ocean, who appeared with Abloh at this year’s Met Gala, once found himself wondering the same thing. In a touching tribute to the designer shared earlier today, Ocean wrote: “In 2018, I believe it was, I called Virgil and asked him how it was possible to play hundreds of shows a year and do numerous fashion collections a year and be a father and a husband and return EVERYONE’s texts with enthusiasm and emojis and encouragement and seemingly with ease.

“I cannot remember how he responded verbatim, but I’m sure it was quotable. Whatever he said…he was always quotable. But the gist of his response was that he was interested in living and living to the maximum extent of his level…which proved to be impossible today because he was BEYOND.”

It seems surreal that at the age of just 41 Abloh has moved beyond. Despite being widely celebrated during his time on earth, the extent of Abloh’s genius is still becoming clear. He was a modern day Renaissance man. An artistic polymath. A remarkable blend of talent, drive and intelligence that makes his death at such a young age even more tragic.

Yet now we can only be grateful. For the barriers he broke, the art he created, and inimitable life he led.