Virgil Abloh, the artistic director of men’s wear at Louis Vuitton and creator of luxury fashion label Off-White, has died. He was 41.
Abloh had been privately battling cancer for the past several years, LVMH announced Sunday.
“We are all shocked after this terrible news. Virgil was not only a genius designer, a visionary, he was also a man with a beautiful soul and great wisdom,” Bernard Arnault, Chief Executive Officer of LVMH, said in a statement. “The LVMH family joins me in this moment of great sorrow, and we are all thinking of his loved ones after the passing of their husband, their father, their brother or their friend.”
Abloh first joined Louis Vuitton in March 2018. As V.F. noted in a profile of the designer that year, he was “the first black man in Louis Vuitton’s 164-year history to debut a men’s-wear line.”
In 2019, Abloh was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called cardiac angiosarcoma. The designer chose to “endure his battle privately,” opting to undergo “numerous challenging treatments” while continuing his work with various organizations, according to a statement posted to his Instagram account.
Abloh is survived by his wife Shannon, children Lowe and Grey, sister Edwina, and parents Nee and Eunice.
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