Virgil Abloh

Ghana­ian-Amer­i­can, Virgil Abloh was born in 1980 and grew up in Rock­ford, Illi­nois. He was an artist, archi­tect, and fashion designer, known for creat­ing the Milanese-based brand, Off-White and becom­ing the first African Amer­i­can Creative Direc­tor for a French luxury house — Louis Vuitton. Abloh’s foun­da­tion is in Civil Engi­neer­ing and Archi­tec­ture. He has a degree from the Univer­sity of Wiscon­sin-Madison and his masters from the Illi­nois Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy. There, at IIT, while study­ing a design curricu­lum devised by Mies van der Rohe, Abloh learned to combine the fields of art, craft, and design. His inter-disci­pli­nary prac­tice and entre­pre­neur­ial spirit lead to signif­i­cant collab­o­ra­tions with artists world­wide on the highest levels of innovation. 

In 2018, Time maga­zine included him as one of the 100 most influ­en­tial people in the world. In the summer of 2019, The Museum of Contem­po­rary Art in Chicago presented ​“Figures of Speech,” a major trav­el­ing survey of Abloh’s work —one of the highest attended exhi­bi­tions in the muse­um’s history. His prema­ture passing in 2021 prompted an outpour­ing of emotion from indus­try figures and collab­o­ra­tors through­out the fashion, music, and art worlds. His desire for social progress and will­ing­ness to share knowl­edge has opened the doors to a broader cast of creatives, firmly estab­lish­ing his legacy as a contem­po­rary cultural visionary.