I enter the Virgil Abloh exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum behind a family of four, all outfitted in a range of tribute t-shirts for the trailblazing Louis Vuitton designer who passed away last year. The dad’s T-shirt reads “HE DID IT SO WE COULD” in the all-caps and quotation marks style Abloh made famous at his luxury streetwear brand Off-White. And dad’s paired the tee with Abloh’s instantly recognisable Nike x Off-White Air Prestos – the ones with “AIR” written on a band around the heel. A thick Off-White yellow lanyard hangs from the keys in his pocket; it matches mom’s bag strap. Their young daughter bounces around in Off-White low-tops, the four arrows logo unmistakable.
“Figures of Speech” is a peculiar show in more ways than one. When it first opened in Chicago in 2019, it had been conceived as a mid-career retrospective for the prodigious American designer who grew up just outside the city. But in December 2021, Abloh – then serving as French fashion house Louis Vuitton’s first Black artistic director – died of a rare form of heart cancer. Tributes poured in from his famous fans, including longtime collaborator Kanye West, Victoria and David Beckham, and model Hailey Bieber, whose wedding dress Abloh designed in 2018.
