“As a designer or artist, it’s important the time you’re in. The time dictates what makes the work relevant.” The Thanksgiving holiday news of the passing of Virgil Abloh at age 41 was an extreme shock for many in the fashion industry, in a year that took too many of its greats. Time is something we wish we all had more of yet, even in his death, Abloh continued to push the ephemeral nature of life with the continuation of his life’s work at his last Louis Vuitton Men’s show staged in Miami. A disruptor of fashion, the strong connections he made in fashion, music, and culture both as a creative and as a leader, meant that many came to emphatically celebrate his legacy. Outside of his many collaborative projects, Abloh was a key player in changing the cultural landscape of fashion to reflect himself, evident in the way he cast his shows and advertisements. Working along with DM Casting’s Samuel Ellis Scheinman, first with Off-White in 2016 and then exclusively through his tenure at Louis Vuitton, Abloh created watershed moments consistently working with models of color in Paris, the bastion of European luxury, along with models from Nigeria, Senegal, and Ghana, his ancestral homeland. As a Ghanaian American black man first, his casting stood out as a deliberate homage to the youth culture he exalted and the many models he brought into the fold. We spoke to those still mourning Abloh’s impact about his impact in fashion, special collaborative moments, and give a platform for them to express their heartfelt goodbyes to the late designer.
Mother agency, Yafan Models in Accra, had a special relationship with Abloh, sending many of their models to work with him in Europe like Ottawa Kwami, Mensah Benjamin, Quaye Dennis, and Bedzo Seth. “He was a dear friend and mentor to us, and showing models as main acts was his mission,” director of Yafan’s Men Division, Monde Gcisa reveals. “He used to tell us that it was important for him to have Ottawa Kwami for his first show as the first black creative director at Louis Vuitton and wanted Ottawa exclusively. Yes, he booked a lot of black models for his shows, but he knew confirming a model directly from Africa would trigger a nation of Ottawas’ coming from Africa with a similar story.”
The concept of time is even more imperceivable when you realize that Abloh had so little of it, yet did so much. He designed planes large and small when he wanted to because he lived in the clouds. He architected and engineered and DJ’d almost as an existential test of the limits of his own demanding work ethic. While Abloh wasn’t without critique or gaffe, he was human after all, his removal of ego meant he perceptively embraced all questioning about his choices, his team, and his vision. “His humble humbling was the greatest thing he taught me,” model Kai Isaiah Jamal reflects. “To go forth without an ego. He simply wanted to open doors and provide space, that was his gig.” Regardless of how he got through the door, no other black man had obtained the top position at Louis Vuitton, the stronghold of Parisian luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH, and with that power, he set out to create rooms in the rooms that others would have never gotten a foot in prior to him. He built skateparks in Accra and scholarships for the next generation of disruptors.
Jamal also recalled the first time they worked with Virgil for the Louis Vuitton F/W 21 Men’s Show and the designer included their poetry in the show film last minute. “Not only did he give me the chance to be the first black trans model to walk for the brand, he saw the importance at that moment and lent his platform as a stage for my words too,” they recall. “I think I realized how much he saw me after this moment like he said ‘we changed history.’ He healed a lot of my feelings about my visibility and how people outside my direct community would see me.” Abloh certainly understood the importance of elevating the faces he believed in, and in the past created store display statues of models that walked his show like Alton Mason doing his memorable backflips for LV’s F/W 19 Men’s Show and more recently, a giant digital rendering of the designer himself, in all his glory. “He turned me into a bronze sculpture for our first set of statues, he remembered I’d said I’d never seen a ‘regal representation of myself’” Jamal tells. “The day we scanned those statues in Paris was one of the last hugs we had; there’s an infinite amount of stuff I wish I said but we said a lot.”
The humor within his prolific design outreach from sneakers to watches to ready-to-wear (the cheese bag!) to album covers and interiors meant that there was little that Abloh didn’t seek to take on and conquer for his résumé. Outside of his many design distinctions, Abloh was also bent on reflecting himself and what he loved to see in his castings. Rappers like Kanye West, Pharell, Mos Def, Kid Cudi, and A$AP Nast were his contemporaries and frequent collaborators, and he influenced the scope of global scouting in countries like Nigeria, Senegal, and Ghana, his ancestral homeland. British Ghanaian model Ottawa Kwami remembers as a last note his favorite words of advice from the late designer always focused on the present and the work with his team, “The time is now, perfect synergy”
