Virgil Was Here: Louis Vuitton’s Tribute Show
As someone who has closely followed the career of Virgil Abloh at Off-White and Louis Vuitton, it was hard to not get emotional when watching the Louis Vuitton tribute show. The entire fashion community is still in shock and grieving the sudden death of Virgil on Sunday, November 28th.
To honor Virgil’s life and legacy, the Spring Summer 2022 collection titled “Virgil Was Here” was the last Louis Vuitton show Virgil created. While it may seem like a quick turnaround, the show was scheduled months prior to be held at the art fair. Per Virgil and his surviving wife Shannon’s wishes, the fashion show went ahead as planned to showcase his final collection.
Louis Vuitton’s tribute show marked the beginning of Art Basel in Miami on November 29th, 2021. The day before the show, billboards were erected all over NY, LA, and Miami in remembrance. At the entrance of the venue was a gigantic statue of the visionary holding a monogrammed canvas.
The West Family: Kim, Kanye, and North, Pharell, Don C, 21 Savage, A$AP Rocky, Rihanna, Bella Hadid, and more came to pay tribute to the late designer. Fellow creatives Nigo, Kerby Jean Raymond, Jonathan Anderson, Daniel Arsham, Jerry Lorenzo, Matthew Williams, and others attended to bid their colleague and longtime friend farewell.
“Fashion and music are two great artistic forms that can be molded by the youth culture—our taste and our passion for evolving things in our limited time on Earth allow us to look at things with fresh eyes.”
Starting off the show, a video of a child biking around Miami and taking off in a red Louis Vuitton hot air balloon appeared. The same hot air balloon was physically present at the show. Kid Cudi, who walked in Abloh’s first Louis Vuitton runway, was joined by Offset and Quavo as models during the show.
Everything about the show provided the most “Virgil-ness” of a collection. Kaleidoscopic hues of acidic green, snowy white, the darkest of noirs, hot pinks, and crimson red lent themselves to stand out in the merging of streetwear and luxury menswear that Virgil pioneered.
The collection was devoid of the typically muted subtleties often associated with heritage fashion houses in Paris. It screamed from the rooftops and unleashed a childlike world of wonder. In 167 years, Louis Vuitton’s clothes have never been more exciting and playful. Virgil brought the fun back into dressing up and made people exhilarated about fashion again. His trailblazing efforts helped form respect and deference to Black culture and their overlooked contributions to the industry.
Virgil’s most notable accomplishment of seamlessly merging art, culture, streetwear, architecture, fashion, and music was not lacking despite his physical absence. Drones ended the show to create a paper plane, a palm tree, his initials, and then ended with “Virgil Was Here”. By incorporating technological advances of which Virgil was always miles ahead, it was an emotional and touching moment to pay homage to the innovator.
I am not often at a loss for words—after all, writing is my job—but is extremely tough for me to fully express just how much of an impact Virgil had within the fashion industry and the rest of the artistic cultural realms. Virgil’s passing—which mirrors Chadwick Boseman’s battle with cancer and fell on the day before Chadwick’s birthday—will stick with me for a long time.
At 41 years young, Virgil had so much life to live with his wife and children. I can’t help but wonder what else was to follow had he not left us so soon. What Virgil set out to do and accomplish remains astronomical. It’s not lost on me that we will never see another person have such an impact in pioneering as Virgil Abloh in this lifetime or any other. His legacy and fruits of his passions remain on Earth, as inspiration, and live on in all of us. Virgil Is Still Here.
“Life is so short that you can’t even waste a day subscribing to what someone thinks you can do versus knowing what you can do.”
Virgil Abloh 1980 — ∞