"Virgil was here": with a highly emotional video, Louis Vuitton today paid tribute to the legacy of the influential African-American designer, one of the creative geniuses of our time, who died on Sunday at the age of 41 after two years of secret battle against a very rare form of cancer. The video is the visiting card for the latest fashion show on November 30 in Miami: "That's what he wanted", said the fashion house of the LVMH group.
The spring-summer 2022 collection, the latest designed by Abloh, is staged like this, as expected, in the city of Florida. 'Virgil was here' is the title that celebrates the designer's impact on fashion and everything he has worked on: in addition to creating fashion also through the Off-White brand, Abloh, who came from engineering and architecture firms, he had collaborated with the most disparate brands: among many, Nike, Ikea, Evian, Rimowa, Vitra, Chrome Hearts. The designer had also worked on the show on his deathbed: on Saturday he and the fashion critic of the British edition of Vogue Anders Christian Madsen, a close associate of his, had written the last words for the show. With Virgil, also his wife Shannon, who had met the "Karl Lagerfeld of Millennials"at school and married him 12 years ago, she gave the go-ahead to the parade. "It's in his wishes," Louis Vuitton said on Instagram. "Virgil was not only a friend, a great collaborator, a creative genius and a disruptor, but also one of the best cultural communicators of our time, said CEO and president Michael Burke:" He paved the way for new generations. He supported his community 'and was an eternal optimist who believed that anything was possible. "And here, in the video, an African-American boy on a bicycle runs frustrated in search of something he cannot find, who looks at the sky without hope, and that finally finds peace by climbing into a hot air balloon: "Virgil was here." Virgil should have been here:the context of the show was and remains Design Miami, the great creative fair in the Design District of the city of Florida where Abloh had already camped out last year for the presentation of the spring-summer 2021 line. Streaming on Louis social channels Vuitton and YouTube the catwalk, while tributes and manifestations of pain continue. Yesterday Kanye West, after having made a clean sweep of his Instagram profile, dedicated his last Sunday sermon to his friend Virgil (they met at the University of Wisconsin) singing a moving cover of Adele's new single, "Easy on Me ", but with new words:" I know that love flows like a river, and that I could wash myself in it forever. I know that there is hope in these waters,but I don't have the courage to swim in it when I sink into my sin ".
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