On the day he graduated from engineering school in 2003, Virgil met Kanye West and went on to meet his then-manager John Monopoly. I am thinking of all your loved ones on this tragic day.'īorn on Septemin Chicago, the first generation Ghanaian-American Abloh was raised in Rockford, Illinois.Īlthough having no formal training as a designer, he learned from his mother who was a seamstress.
'Virgil, I am lost for words,' Versace said on Instagram. Italian fashion designer Donatella Versace was among many celebrities to pay tribute to Abloh on Sunday. His designs were supported by the biggest names in fashion, including Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Hailey Bieber, and sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid.
'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 brother, their father or their friend.' 'We are all shocked by this terrible news, Virgil was not only a genius designer, a visionary, he was also a man with a beautiful soul and great wisdom,' Louis Vuitton executive director Bernault Arnault said in a statement. He was diagnosed with the condition in 2019. The fashion prodigy, a married father of two, had been privately battling a rare form of the disease called cardiac angiosarcoma. Virgil Abloh, who made history as Louis Vuitton's first black artistic director, is dead at age 41 following a secret years-long battle with cancer.