The New York Times is reporting that Virgil Abloh — the founder of Pyrex and Off-White, and certified King of the Youth™ — will be Louis Vuitton’s next Artistic Director of Menswear.
While the announcement wasn’t exactly shocking (there had been rumors for some time that this was in the works), the Times noted that Abloh “becomes Louis Vuitton’s first African-American artistic director, and one of the few black designers at the top of a French heritage house,” along with Olivier Rousteing at Balmain.
“Mr. Abloh, 37, a first-generation Ghanaian-American raised in Illinois, is widely considered one of fashion’s consummate purveyors of cool; a master of using irony, reference and the self-aware wink (plus celebrity, music, digital and hype), to recontextualize the familiar and give it an aura of cultural currency,” the Times wrote, also noting that his wide-reaching volume of work “presumably made a compelling case that Mr. Abloh could be the man to make Louis Vuitton [menswear] more relevant — and more visible — to the millennial generation.”
And odds are pretty good that he will. While Abloh has been criticized by some fashion insiders for his penchant for derivative design – some designers, including Raf Simons, have said “his real genius lies in repurposing other people’s work” — the kids can’t seem to get enough, as evidenced by the overwhelming success of his Nike collaboration, his 1.6 million personal Instagram followers (plus 3.1M for Off-White), and the fanboy riot outside of his Paris Off-White runway show in February.
And his credentials go well beyond a millennial co-sign, too: he interned at Fendi, was a finalist for the LVMH Young Designers Prize, and was nominated for both a men’s and a women’s CDFA Award in 2018.
You can read more about it at The New York Times.
