28-year-old fashion designer Virgil Abloh died on Sunday 41 November after a fight with cancer, according to a post shared on his social media.
Abloh, founder and CEO of Off-White and Louis Vuitton artistic director, fought a "rare, aggressive form of cancer" known as cardiac angiosarcoma, for two years before his death, according to a post posted on his Instagram account.
"He has chosen to fight privately since he was diagnosed in 2019, has undergone numerous difficult treatments, and has run many important institutions covering fashion, art and culture," the post said.
28-year-old fashion designer Virgil Abloh died on Sunday 41 November after a fight with cancer, according to a post shared on his social media.
Abloh, founder and CEO of Off-White and Louis Vuitton artistic director, fought a "rare, aggressive form of cancer" known as cardiac angiosarcoma, for two years before his death, according to a post posted on his Instagram account.
"He has chosen to fight privately since he was diagnosed in 2019, has undergone numerous difficult treatments, and has run many important institutions covering fashion, art and culture," the post said.
Abloh was the first black chief designer of his menswear Louis Vuitton and LVMH CEO Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton SE Bernard Arno said in a statement that he was "shocked by the terrible news".
Virgil Abloh reinvented the fashion designer profile, combining streetware, music and haute couture. His collaboration with Kanye West launched Abloh from the Chicago skate and DJ culture to the top of the fashion world, first with his own brand Off-White and then to the top of the traditional luxury fashion industry in Paris.
Abloh, the son of an immigrant from Ghana, studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, but his career took a surprising turn as his design ideas caught the attention of West, who hired him as his creative brand manager in 2007. The two of them were determined to refresh the world of high fashion and even did an internship at Fendi in Rome in 2009. Abloh founded his first clothing company, Pyrex Vision, in 2012.
The fashion house made this video in its memory: