Virgil Abloh's 5 most iconic fashion shows at Vuitton From debut to "Virgil was here"

Tomorrow in Paris the latest collection designed by Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton will be staged, a show that will be even more significant because it is posthumous, given the premature death of the Chicago-based designer on November 28th. The man who, from Pyrex to Off White, was able to offer an alternative model of creative director in a historical moment in which this figure needed a new definition and at the same time contributed to making fashion mainstream through a clear language, direct and all-encompassing, departing from the concept of fashion as an elitist world out of time and space. 

In view of the Louis Vuitton SS22, here is a list of the 5 most significant Abloh fashion shows at Louis Vuitton.

The debut show - SS19

"As children, our dreams and aspirations are personified by archetypes", Abloh wrote in the show's notes, explaining that his intention was to explore "the assumptions we make about people based on the way they dress: about their cultural background, gender, and sexuality.” By remixing topical characters of our society, such as the businessman, the artist, the salesman and the tramp, the result is an eclectic offer that defies gender codes and makes hard-to-classify models. Dramatic overcoats with broad shoulders and airplane-shaped buttons, LV's signature monogram-print leather reworked into jet-shaped bags and metal suitcases. And also Scottish tartan, cowboy hats, overlapping skirts and trousers and varsity jackets. The highlight of the collection were two sculptural jackets that reproduced the skylines of Paris and New York. The controversy over cultural appropriation in fashion is overcome by Abloh with a creative mixture: from the union of elements that are held together without synthesizing and eliminating each other, but something entirely new. The being together of different things, impossible if one immediately resorts to the controversy over cultural appropriation, could be what opposes the alleged purity of cultures. Abloh summarizes the concept in "Tourist vs. Purist", a motto that stands out on Vuitton bags or jackets. The "tourist" is the outsider, one who does not historically belong to a certain world, who has been excluded from it for a long time by the purists, the "natives" of a culture. Abloh through this collection tries to suggest that fashion outsiders, luxury tourists, those like him, are the ones who could bring a new vision into fashion and the world.

Virgil was here - SS22

Virgil Abloh's latest fashion show for Louis Vuitton was staged on Tuesday 30th November at the Miami Marine Stadium. The spin-off of the SS22 men's collectio seemed to be the synthesis of Abloh's work in the French fashion house. Because there, as many had hoped, there were really all those who had shared an incredible life with Virgil Abloh, Kid Cudi on the catwalk, as well as in the show of 21 June 2018 in the gardens of the Palais-Royale, but also Ye, Pharrell, Jerry Lorenzo, Don C, Samuel Ross, Matthew Williams, Sean Wotherspoon and many others. Someone called it a funeral, a last public farewell to give the right tribute to Abloh's work, but perhaps it would be better to say that it was rather the closing of a circle that began in 2009 at Paris Fashion Week. At the end of the catwalk, the crowd of collaborators from the style office, wearing a special Louis Vuitton Miami t-shirt, followed by the explosion of colorful fireworks against the backdrop of the monumental statue of Abloh positioned between the fashion show area and the location of the post-event concert, which seemed to be staring impatiently at the red balloon with the LV monogram as it tugged on its ropes relentlessly.