Virgil Abloh has been confirmed as the new artistic director of Louis Vuitton Homme. He will present his first collection in Paris in June during Men’s Fashion Week. “It is an honor to accept the position of artistic director of the Louis Vuitton Men’s Collections,” said Abloh in a statement. “The heritage and creativity of the house are for me key inspirations, and I aspire to honor them while creating new bridges with modern times.”
He celebrated on Instagram, where he has some 1.6 million followers and rising, with a post of a very large Louis Vuitton trunk. This is the social medial equivalent of an air punch if ever we saw one. The post also has pertinence outside the travel heritage of the brand itself. Abloh is relocating himself and his family to Paris, so he will need a whole cavalcade of trunks — Vuitton or otherwise.
Said Louis Vuitton president and CEO Michael Burke: “Having followed with great interest the rise of Virgil since he worked with me at Fendi in 2006 (Abloh interned there for six months while Burke was CEO and Kanye West a fellow intern.) I am delighted to see how his innate creativity and forward-thinking approach have made him a staple not only in fashion but also in popular culture, and his sensitivity to luxury and know-how will be crucial in imagining the Louis Vuitton Man collections of the future.”
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It was only in 2015 that Abloh’s own label, Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh was a finalist for the coveted LVMH Prize. Abloh also scooped FN’s 2017 Shoe of the Year award for his Off-White x Air Jordan 1 collaboration.
The announcement ends months of speculation following news of the departure of departing artistic director Kim Jones, who has moved to head up Dior Homme.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgxhswqgWJF/?taken-by=mrkimjones
Born in 1980 in Rockford, Ill., Abloh has a degree in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a master’s in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
