Their story. Shannon Abloh, the widow of designer Virgil Abloh, opened up about her late husband’s legacy one year after his devastating death.
In her first-ever interview since his passing, Shannon, 41, got candid with the New York Times in an article published on Tuesday, November 29. The artist died at age 41 on November 28, 2021, following a private battle with angiosarcoma — a rare type of cancer.
“It wasn’t like we knew that he was going to pass,” Shannon said, explaining that the former Louis Vuitton artisan wanted to keep his diagnosis, which he learned in 2019, private because “he didn’t want people to look at him and think, ‘Are you OK?'”
Shannon shared that although she and Virgil “knew the challenge of what he was fighting” his condition changed “a lot faster than we thought it was going to.”
The couple was able to keep things under wraps due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I know that Covid was an incredibly hard thing for so many people,” Shannon said. “But for us it was an amazing time because Virgil didn’t have to make excuses to get out of shows or DJing,” Shannon shared with the Times. “No one could go anywhere. So we were able to have those last two and a half years.”
Following his death, Shannon made it her mission to protect Virgil’s memory.
“We never had the ‘this is the legacy that I want you to work toward’ discussion,” she said. “But because I was with him for so long, I knew every inch of him. I knew every inch of his brand.”
Although the Edgewood College alum has been approached by other designers, artist and friends — she feels it’s her job and her job alone to spearhead what’s to come for Virgil’s creations.
“It belongs to me, it belongs to his children,” she said. “After his passing, so many people came up to me and said, ‘Virgil was my best friend.’ His best friend in the fashion industry, his best friend in the music world. A lot of his collaborators, or even people who maybe weren’t that close to him, feel ‘I can do this to help his legacy, or I can do that to help his legacy.’ I have to stay on this train, because if I don’t, I don’t know where it’s going to go. That’s my place and my position.”
Shannon and Virgil’s business adviser, Howard Feller, explained in the interview that there are “at least a year’s worth of Off-White x Nike products already in the pipeline.”
“We are on the 50-year plan,” he added.
In May, it was announced that Shannon would be assuming the dual role of CEO and managing director at Virgil Abloh Securities. She went on to accept the Board of Trustee’s Award on behalf of her late husband at the CFDA Fashion Awards in November.
The couple share kids Lowe and Grey.
Virgil was a man of many talents. He founded his label, Off-White, in 2012 — which elevated the idea of streetwear, thanks to his many Paris Fashion Week runway shows that saw supermodels including Bella Hadid and Naomi Campbell strut down the runway. In 2018, he was named the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection, which led to the creation of vibrant pieces that gave the fashion house a major upgrade.
He also famously designed Kendall Jenner‘s 2018 Met Gala jumpsuit, many of Serena Williams‘ tennis match attire as well as Hailey Bieber‘s (née Baldwin) 2019 wedding dress to Justin Bieber that featured “‘Till death do us part” written across the veil.
