Famed fashion designer Virgil Abloh has died from cancer. He was 41.
Abloh was a designer, entrepreneur, and DJ who served as the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection. He was internationally known and closely affiliated with Kanye West.
LVMH, the French holding company that owns Louis Vuitton, revealed that Abloh died on Sunday after struggling with the disease for several years.
LVMH’s Bernard Arnault issued a statement:
“We are all shocked after this terrible news. Virgil was not only a genius designer, a visionary; he was also a man with a beautiful soul and great wisdom. 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 father, their brother or their friend.”
Abloh was an accomplished man with few peers. He founded the fashion label Off-White in 2012 after he and Kanye West served together in an internship at Fendi. In 2018, he was named as one of Time magazine’s most influential people. He crafted album covers for The Throne (Jay-Z and Kanye’s 2011 classic album) as well as the controversial artwork for Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon. He even loved to DJ. He held a residency in La Vegas in 2019 as well as launching an internet radio station just this year.
In 2019, Abloh was diagnosed with cardiac angiosarcoma, a rare form of cancer.
Abloh leaves behind a wife, Shannon Sundberg, as well as their two children.