Louis Vuitton unveils Virgil Abloh's final collection at Paris Fashion Week

[ad_1]

Written by Nick Remsen, CNN

CNN Style is one of the official media partners of Paris Fashion Week. See all coverage here.

Louis Vuitton has unveiled the final collection by its late artistic director of menswear, Virgil Abloh.

Abloh died on November 28, 2021 after a two-year battle with cancer, and just a few days later, Louis Vuitton held a (previously scheduled) fashion show in Miami that featured updates and tweaks to Abloh’s Spring-Summer 2022 roster. It initially seemed as if that event would be the designer’s last showcase, but he’d already completed much of Fall-Winter 2022.

The collection — Abloh’s eighth since his groundbreaking appointment to the 168-year-old house in 2018 — was revealed Thursday at Paris Fashion Week in a repeat format: first for press and influencers, then, a few hours later, for friends and family.

Naomi Campbell, a friend and collaborator of Virgil Abloh, closes the Louis Vuitton show at Paris Fashion Week. Credit: Louis Vuitton

The catwalk’s unfolding was a team effort spearheaded by Ib Kamara, the Sierra Leone-born multidisciplinary creative and editor-in-chief of the fashion publication Dazed. Kamara, whose high-profile styling gigs have included Fenty ads for Rihanna and numerous international Vogue covers, began collaborating with Abloh ahead of Louis Vuitton’s Spring-Summer 2021 collection. Since then, he has styled Louis Vuitton menswear runway shows as well as campaigns.

Over a Zoom call from Paris, Kamara spoke candidly about the process . “We wanted to keep it where we thought Virgil was with us, but push it to where Virgil would’ve taken it,” he said. “One of the most brilliant things about the man was that he could introduce starkly new ideas every season, but that these ideas also intertwined with seasons from the past.”