It is an enigma to contemplate one of the last projects of a creator who is no longer here, whose death caught the world by surprise.
But that enigma is also an opportunity to review an artistic legacy between admiration and nostalgia.
This is what happens in New York in an exhibition —opened on Friday, May 20— of 47 pairs of Louis Vuitton and Nike Air Force 1 sneakers created by Virgil Abloh.
That shoe represents part of the legacy of Abloh, the American designer who died at the age of 41 on November 28, 2021 after a private fight against cancer.
The exhibit at Brooklyn's Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse, open to the public through May 31, features the original sneakers first seen in Louis Vuitton's spring-summer 2022 menswear collection, which debuted in June 2021.
More information
How Virgil Abloh changed menswear forever
Before entering -for free- the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse in Brooklyn, the warehouse announces the exhibition in a symbolic key from different fronts.
He is dressed in electric orange, and a huge installation of a
breakdancer
is sporting sneakers from the collaboration between Louis Vuitton, Nike and Abloh.
The Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York (USA), where Virgil Abloh's sneakers for Louis Vuitton and Nike take place.Jason Crowley/BFA.com (Jason Crowley/BFA.com)
The sample's experience seems to allude to Abloh's spirit of play and daring.
The 47 pairs in the show, which were manufactured in the Louis Vuitton atelier at Fiesso d'Artico in Venice, Italy, are playfully distributed in a space that feels like a house of mirrors.
The walls are adorned with clouds, alluding to Abloh's presentations and campaigns, while the sneakers are surreally displayed on magnetized walls that allow them to be seen up, down, sideways, almost as if Spider-Man were there.
The sneakers include in their design the quotation marks of Abloh's signature in the word "Air" as a graphic sign of its identity and revolutionary character.
The color palette ranges from neutrals to rich tones, and the funniest textures between whites and reds, whites and blues, golds and multicolors, some featuring a graffiti print.
In the exhibition, each shoe is accompanied by a small urn that identifies it in a three-dimensional way;
when approaching one of them, the spectator can play with the screen until manipulating and moving the visualization of it.
A tree house closes the exhibition in allusion to that haven that so many children have wanted and when climbing to it, the viewer finds an audiovisual record of Abloh's design process, including inspiration boards and a video that shows the designer in full swing.
Aerial view of Virgil Abloh's exhibit in New York, with the magnetized sneakers on pillars and the treehouse in the background.Jason Crowley/BFA.com (Jason Crowley/BFA.com)
The exhibition precedes the commercial launch of nine models of the expensive
sneakers
: the
mid-tops
(boot type) will be sold for 2,500 euros while the
low-tops
(lower) will cost 2,000 euros.
The sales process for them will feature a pre-order service available to a selection of the Louis Vuitton community, while the June launch will take place through a special digital campaign, Louis Vuitton said in a press release.
The unexpected death of Abloh, artistic director of the Louis Vuitton menswear line between 2017 and 2021 and founder in 2013 of the fashion house Off White, led to numerous reflections on his place in fashion.
“The world lost a fashion superstar.
An innovator.
A creator for the history books,” designer Donatella Versace said then, evoking Abloh's mark on fashion.
Two models of Nike shoes designed by Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton. Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
With its playful spirit, each design in this exhibition reveals Abloh's urban imprint in the vocabulary of materials such as leather alongside the Louis Vuitton monogram and checkerboard pattern.
“Who did it first?”, “Where did that idea come from?”, “Is (this idea) new?”
These are questions raised by Abloh, one of his quotes that are illustrated in the exhibition as a nod to his system of ideas.
Aside from his bold work in the classic Louis Vuitton context, Abloh's collaboration with Nike is emblematic in that it is a marriage of affinities.
2022 marks 40 years of the Nike Air Force 1 as a symbol of popular culture.
One of those shoes that are part of the collective imagination are precisely these basketball shoes designed by Bruce Kilgore and presented in 1982 that combine
hip hop
and
streetwear
references that transcend time.
"I'm not comfortable with the status quo," Abloh said, in an interview with Hypebeast in 2018 that puts into perspective his proposal to elevate that
streetwear
and celebrate the influence of black culture in fashion;
qualities that reverberate within the framework of the different models in this exhibition.
Virgil Abloh, at an Off-White show held in Paris in February 2019. PHILIPPE LOPEZ (AFP)
The market has endorsed these shoes considering that, at an auction in early 2022 at Sotheby's, 200 pairs were sold for a total of 25.3 million dollars.
Proceeds from the auction went to The Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund, an organization in tune with Abloh's life mission to promote equity and inclusion in the fashion industry by providing scholarships to black or white students. of Afro-American and African descent, with a promising academic future.
That scholarship in collaboration with the Fashion Scholarship Fund that Abloh pledged is a crucial effort to address the lack of diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry.
Announcing his death, a
post
from Instagram revealed that Abloh regularly claimed, "Everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself."
They are words that make sense when considering his faith in the scholarship fund and his aesthetic that appeals to so many young people.
Apart from celebrating Abloh's art, this show underscores the optimism that many attributed to the designer.
Although he is no longer physically present, this exhibition is a memory of his life, his vision and his work, which pulsates vigorously in fashion.
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