Virgil Abloh, a leading fashion designer who brought streetwear to high couture as artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear and founder of the label Off-White, died Sunday. He was 41, and a statement on Abloh's Instagram account said his death followed a private two-year battle with "a rare, aggressive form of cancer, cardiac angiosarcom."
Abloh, who referred to himself a "maker," was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2018. "We are all shocked by this terrible news," Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy chief executive Bernard Arnault said in a statement Sunday. "Virgil was not only a genius designer and a visionary, he was also a man with a beautiful soul and great wisdom. "
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Abloh was born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1980 to Ghanian immigrant parents. He had no formal fashion training, though his mother, a seamstress, taught him how to sew. Abloh earned a degree in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a master's in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is survived by his wife, Shannon Abloh, and children Lowe and Grey.
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