The Virgil Abloh Archive Is More Than the Sum of Its 20,000 Parts (EXCLUSIVE)
The late, great Virgil Abloh left behind a legacy that's more than tangible. Though best known for material innovation, Abloh more aptly fostered ideas that created connective tissue between a vast circle of collaborators, peers, and friends. His influence lingers not only because it inspired tangible things but because it's resonant throughout street culture and the fashion industry like soundwaves, vibrating for all who care to hear.
At Virgil Abloh: the Codes, his life's work was quite audible. For those who couldn't hear it in person, it takes only a glimpse at the imagery provided exclusively to Highsnobiety by photographer Karl Hab to get the full scale.
This exhibit, the first major European showcase dedicated to the Abloh's collective efforts, filled the Grand Palais with an enormous variety of items collected and affected over Abloh's life. The Virgil Abloh Archive, the branch of Abloh's estate that oversaw the presentation, purportedly contains over 20,000 items of Abloh ephemera, a great deal of which was here on display.
Beyond the one-off objects, Virgil Abloh: the Codes less tacitly reflected a gathering of the ideals that Abloh himself represented. Quite literally: so often are words like "community" loosely tossed around but, in this case, the term actually feels apt.
The exhibit, which runs in Paris until October 9, coincided with Paris Fashion Week but, more notably, ends just ahead of Abloh's 45th birthday in late November.
So it was fitting that a handful of Abloh's coterie would gather, even if only by happenstance, to pay respects in this space dotted with ultra-rare Nike sneakers, collaborative tees, runway-show set design, and the Louis Vuitton artistic director's personal-use duffle bags.
Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo, Naomi Campbell, Travis Scott, Gigi Hadid, and model Kozue Akimoto were among the crowd during Virgil Abloh: the Codes' opening week, browsing far-gone memories and the colette gift shop.
This really was all of Abloh's great ideas in one place. The industry-shaping product that only he could've connected was all here, yes, but so too were the influential people who all came from disparate walks of life, themselves guided by Abloh's boundless expressionism. Tangible genius meets ingenious connectivity.
And the story's not yet over: several pairs of thus-unreleased Virgil Abloh Nike sneakers, including some shoes seemed marked as the Virgil Abloh Archive's own Nike collaboration, were slotted in among the samples and special editions, hinting at Abloh's ongoing legacy.
Of course, Abloh's legacy isn't only shoes. As the exhibit demonstrated, it's ideas and the people who shape them.
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