Virgil Abloh, the liberator, is and will be fashion history. "Oh, captain! My captain!" —some will sing— when his legacy is studied for what it was: the definitive style exercise to free what was understood as men's fashion from prejudice until well into the first decade of the 2000s. The life and work of an outsider, graduate in Civil Engineering with a master's degree in Architecture, who loses his vocation and manages to turn the prevailing canons upside down until then. A lot of talent and an exceptional godfather —Kanye West— would result in a prolific and interesting production that was capable of opening the debate on the new masculinity.

The messianic nature of Abloh's work—both as head of the creative direction of Louis Vuitton's men's division and of his own Off-White label—would not be understood without knowing part of his life story. How did the son of a Ghanaian immigrant couple living in Rockford (Illinois) manage to become the first black person capable of leading the historic Parisian firm? Thanks to the way he had to connect both with celebrities and with all those new generations of consumers who valued his creations as true objects of desire. “I love working with these two polar opposites to see what that contemporaneity of youth culture that discovers luxury for the first time is like. I act as a conduit to establish a dialogue between the two”. This is how the creative director defined his work last June at WWD. He did it the same day his spring-summer 2022 collection was published: what has become his latest work for the French maison.

Virgil Abloh's creative curriculum will be remembered for having placed issues such as racial diversity, gender fluidity, culture or politics at the center of debate through highly recognizable codes that blended seamlessly with skillful marketing management. Off-White, the brand that he launched back in 2012, became the biggest and best experiment to win over an audience avid for nostalgia, which he managed to conquer right away. Shoes and accessories were his forte. Hence, he decided to knock on Nike's door to launch a collaboration that will be remembered by generations to come. Abloh created several limited editions with the most famous sneakers of the Oregon firm. He intervened them with fonts, messages or flanges and turned them into true objects of desire for collectors. A formula —resale market through— that broke with what was established until then: the new masculine status symbols immersed themselves in streetwear; the new favorite aesthetic trend of millennials.

It is undeniable that all of Abloh's production is traversed by the same concept. It doesn't matter if you look at his collections for Louis Vuitton —the firm in which he landed in 2017 after the departure of Kim Jones to Dior Men— or those of Off-White: he was a man obsessed with textures, colors and finished. The excess and opulence so typical of the worlds of rap or hip-hop made both brands become brands with a global vision and concept. Recognized, recognizable and desirable. A creative universe in which luxury, design and style will make scholars and critics dare to label his work as "iconic".

His resounding designs have always mixed the best of two worlds: the suit and the tracksuit. Tailoring and sportswear have met, they have broken down and have been converted into separate collections of clothing that called for new airs for a men's fashion, perhaps somewhat outdated. Abloh conceived his work as a game: from hypnotic trips to a kind of Toy Story in Tokyo to that show conceived as a chessboard for his autumn-winter 2021 collection with Louis Vuitton.

The subculture arrived in Paris, the capital of fashion

One of Abloh's great achievements was giving voice to minorities. And she achieved it with a clear presence of black models in her shows. He dressed them as astronauts with capes studded with holographic prints and placed them in the debate of a new fashion politics by dressing them with flags or garments studded with political messages. His break with the Western model made Paris see proposals typical of the subculture of large North American cities. Skate aesthetics or those typical gangster fashion silhouettes have ensured that their designs are now considered true works of art. With his premature death at the age of 41 due to cancer, the man from Illinois leaves those who have seen in him the creative and revolutionary mirror in which to look at themselves a little more orphaned. Men's fashion, with all its edges and readings, has lost a great genius. To the engineer who had helped her free herself. Goodbye: “Oh, Captain! My captain!".