Last night, while the booths at Art Basel, Untitled, NADA, and all the other satellite art fairs were closing up shop in Miami, an audience of well-heeled celebrities watched the final runway show dreamed up by designer Virgil Abloh, who died unexpectedly on Sunday. The first Black man to be an artistic director at Louis Vuitton, Abloh was innovating until the very end, and the show served as a fitting tribute to the artist.
A video of the event posted to YouTube begins with clip of a young Black boy riding a bicycle around Miami’s Downtown and Key Biscayne’s Crandon Park Beach, ultimately coming upon a red hot air balloon that takes him flying skyward. At the IRL event at Miami’s Maritime Marina, an actual hot air balloon was backlit.
A 30-foot-tall, rainbow statue of Abloh was also installed at the site for the even, depicting Abloh looking to the sky, with an LV monogram-inscribed canvas held at his side.
Guests at the event included Kanye West, Pharrell, Venus Williams, Rihanna, A$AP Rocky, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Kim Kardashian, plus members of the Arnault family, which owns LVMH. Among the models who walked the runway were Kid Cudi, Quavo, and Offset.
The late designer was consumed with the idea of leading by example and creating opportunities for future generations. As a New Yorker profile explained, the genesis of the logo for Abloh’s early line Pyrex Vision was a reference to the baking pan used to cook crack cocaine and Michael Jordan’s ubiquitous number 23, representing “the two economic paths available to a Black man who wanted to get out of Chicago: drug dealing and sports.” Abloh’s short yet incredibly prolific career as a DJ, artist, designer, architect, engineer, influencer was a testament to the possibilities of reinvention.
The Miami event closed with a recording of Abloh speaking. “There’s no limit, life is so short that you can’t waste even a day subscribing to what someone thinks you can do versus knowing what you can do,” his voice said. This was followed by a swarm of drones taking to the sky spelled out the phrase “Virgil was here” in the sky, signaling the end of an era.
Below, watch the full video of the Spring/Summer 2022 Menswear show.
