Charges of borrowing, stealing, or downright plagiarizing have dogged Virgil Abloh throughout his meteoric rise, and yet more allegations emerged this week following his recent Off-White™ and Louis Vuitton shows in Paris.
As reported by Hypebae, “designer Michelle Elie… accused Abloh of copying her son’s previous FW18 designs” in his FW19 Off-White™ collection, while “similar allegations” came from Kerby Jean-Raymond, winner of the 2018 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, and designer of Pyer Moss, in regards to a FW19 Louis Vuitton look.
(Of course, @diet_prada helped blow this one up, because they really do the lord’s work.)
“In two posts, [Elie] shared images of a yellow jacket and matching pants featuring graffiti which are designed by her son for ARISE Fashion Week in Nigeria last year. In another image, the coat is worn with a helmet,” Hypebae wrote. Abloh’s new Off-White™ collection, the story noted, was “headlined by strikingly similar” yellow pieces, outfitted with hand-drawn accents throughout. Also present in both collections were football helmets, which is probably a little too weird and specific to be a total coincidence.
Then, during Abloh’s Louis Vuitton show, there was a model styled in an almost-identical manner to the way Jean-Raymond had styled one of his models during his FW18 Ready-to-Wear show, complete with an oversized, American flag-inspired scarf.
And while that one might be a little less obvious, Jean-Raymond wasn’t too pleased, and said (in a now-deleted Twitter post), “I learned 6x ago that no one in the press is going to call him out about it. When you advertise in these mags, you’re a God. He has the bigger platform, I can get mad all I want in the end he has millions more following that believe he did it first.”
Abloh has yet to comment.
You can read more about it at Hypebae.
