Artistic director for male Louis Vuitton and founder of Off-White,

No Limits

The specialist luxury goods brand LVMH paid tribute to him two days later in their Miami fashion show, directed by Virgil until his death, with the running theme of ‘Virgil was here.’ On the eve of his death, Saturday, 27th, he continued approving every detail for the show, his peers still clueless to his illness. The show’s purpose then switched to paying tribute to the creative mastermind, and ended with a recording of Virgil’s voice, “There is no limit. Life is so short that there is no time to be wasted subscribing to what someone thinks you can’t do versus what you know you can do.” Many items in this ‘Virgil was here’ collection have since been bought thousands of times over, proving how important the designer was to fashion lovers and how greatly they will be missed.

Controversies

To add to his list of successes, Abloh was the creative Director at Donda, Kanye West’s own brand, back in 2010. However, there were rumours that Ye [Kanye West] wasn’t all that kind to the designer, despite claiming they were best friends. “Keep Virgil’s name out your mouth,” Tremaine Emory, creative director of Supreme, posted after Ye had used Abloh’s death in a caption for a “Dying for validation and attention seeking” post on Instagram. It clearly upset true friends of the fashion mogul, as Emory continued “Tell people why you didn’t get invited to Virgil’s actual funeral”. With Gigi Hadid commenting beneath: “Finally! Everyone who knew Virgil knew Kanye did not treat him like a friend.”

Manofthepeople

To the surprise of some fashion fans, the late designer was also a talented DJ, performing in places as big as Coachella. It’s obvious he was skilled in many different areas. In 2020, he collaborated with Grammy Award winner Lupe Fiasco, to create a track called SHOES, based on the life and death of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man who was killed while out jogging, and to “all black people murdered for living their lives.” Abloh supported those from a similar background to his own as much as possible throughout his life. In 2020, he had raised $1 million for his Post-Modern Scholarship Fund, which facilitated paid summer internships in different fashion companies and mentorship from industry leaders. He also collaborated with Nike in the Black Skate Program, aiming to elevate black talent in skateboarding. He contributed to healthcare in many ways, creating capsule collections supporting the likes of the American red Cross and the British Lung Foundation, before working with Equinox to raise money for Cycle for Survival, a movement to beat rare types of cancer. He will be missed by many in the fashion world, along with lots of friends and family, but he leaves behind a legacy that will inspire generations for decades.

Dame Vivienne Westwood was a highly respected English fashion designer, born in 1941, who sadly passed away in December 2022. She was rated fourth most influential artist in Britain of the last 50 years by Sky Arts just a few months before she died, an achievement that highlights the mark she made in the fashion industry.

Vivienne died in Clapham in London, aged 81, with her family around her. A representative said she continued to make art and doing everything she loved until her last moments. Clearly, the Vivienne Westwood brand was at the forefront of her mind even in her last days, as Andreas Kronthaler, Vivienne’s husband, and creative partner, said “We have been working until the end and she has given me plenty of things to get on with.”

Punk roots

Known now as the ‘Queen of British Fashion’, the English designer started off as self-taught, with no formal fashion training. She learnt by taking apart second-hand clothes she would buy from markets, cutting them up and re-constructing them. The unique style she developed stayed with her even when she was one of the most well-known designers around, as she never lost touch of her authenticity and ‘punk’ inspiration. Some pieces even caused controversy through her career, but that never phased her. Never disappointing, many of her collections shocked everyone in the world of fashion, from early on in her career. In 1987, her Statue of Liberty corset was labelled as starting the ‘underwear as outerwear’ clothing trend, one which is still around today, showing how groundbreaking her ideas have always been.

Royalendorsement

The strong-minded designer always had an activist streak in her. She was once on Tatler’s cover dressed as Margaret Thatcher, in a suit ordered by the Prime Minister herself, (which she later cancelled) with a caption reading ‘This woman was once a punk.” When receiving an Order of the British Empire medal in 1992 from Queen Elizabeth II, Vivienne twirled to the photographers outside, to reveal she had worn no knickers that day! Although, no matter if you liked that side of her or not, no one could turn away from her massive success, as she was invited back to Buckingham Palace in 2006, to receive her designation of Dame Commander of the British Empire.

Changemaker\

Like Virgil, Vivienne supported many campaigns, including focusing on the climate crisis in 2007. She published the manifesto ‘Active Resistance to Propaganda’ and wrote “We have a choice: to become more cultivated, and more human, or by not choosing, to be the destructive animal, the victim of our own cleverness.”

To the surprise of many, as she was a businesswoman after all, Vivienne was openly anti-consumerist. She enjoyed teasing her customers, telling them things like “Stop buying clothes. Why not protect this gift of life – I don’t take the attitude that destruction is inevitable. Some of us would like to stop it.” To add to her list of remarkable resistance and determination, she drove a tank to David Cameron’s home, protesting against fracking. She also joined other designers like Stella McCartney in bombarding the government to ban the retail sale of real fur.

She regularly wrote on her own website ‘No Man’s Land’ about climate and social issues and highlighted them as much as possible throughout her career, always putting them before her own success, showing how important the world and the people in it has always been to her.

Effortlesslyoriginal

Rightly so, Vivienne will be remembered by all as ‘The Queen of British Fashion’ and for all her amazing work, whether that’s designing new concepts of fashion or going above and beyond for a better future for the world. “She tore apart notions of femininity and sex, and demanded that fashion do better in regards to climate. She was effortlessly original” wrote Karen Elson, a model who worked with the artist on many occasions. Other tributes after her death came from other designers like Marc Jacobs, who was “Heartbroken”, or those who used to work at her stores. “Vivienne is gone and the world is already a less interesting place. Love you, Viv.”