🔗 Share this article

In the years leading up to his untimely death in 2021 at the age of 41, Virgil Abloh was frequently described as the most significant fashion designer of his generation. Not necessarily the most skilled—far from it. Even during his tenure at Louis Vuitton, where he set a precedent as the first Black man to lead the label's menswear in 2018, he leaned toward T-shirt designs over custom cuts. But as a mainstream-savvy polymath who approached fashion with a teenager's enthusiasm, his accessible-luxury interpretation of streetwear sought to make accessible the exclusive world of fashion to the next generation like him who had historically shut out, whether he was imprinting his vision on premium handbags or luxury goods.

Cultural visionary … portrait of Virgil Abloh.

The extent of his impact on design isn't easily measured in material objects, but The Codes exhibition, the premier display devoted entirely to the deceased fashion designer's massive 20,000-item archive, shows that he was as much a avid gatherer of items—the eponymous codes—as he was a maker of them.

Curated by Abloh's partners Chloe and Mahfuz Sultan along with his widow, Shannon, this two-level exhibition uses his possessions to document his evolution from the child of Ghanaian immigrants in Illinois to creative, visual artist, DJ, and finally one of the biggest designers in the world.

The setup resembles a garage sale. Large piles of neatly arranged Off-White T-shirts and athletic shoe designs sit alongside paintbrushes, cutting instruments, and teenage laptops. A pair of Nike Air Jordan 1s have been reversed, while one of his designer bags marked with the word “sculpture” (quotation marks were one of his trademark elements) is placed solitarily on a pedestal.

The more immersive displays include his studio at Louis Vuitton (he notoriously referred to his phone as his desk) and a full-size DJ booth; evidence of his wide appeal, coming of age in Illinois in the 2000s, his performance alias back then was Flat White.

The signposting is sparse, and while some of the more cryptic inclusions—assorted USB sticks and audio recordings in glass vitrines—will only resonate to his most devoted followers, it is a intriguing insight into the thought process of a digital native developing in a capitalist world before TikTok.

A lot to take in … various objects on display at the exhibition.

At times it can feel excessive, but the structured layout is also how Abloh worked. He would capture his discussions with journalists on tapes which he kept in order to return to and analyze as his work developed. The tapes are probably among the unshown items still in holding which—based on the reception and lines outside—will probably be displayed in later installations.

Abloh's tenure at Louis Vuitton was very successful but it was his joint projects with worldwide companies which transcended the attraction of his tailoring, handling each item—a luxury luggage, a Nike trainer, the aforementioned Evian bottles—as if he was referencing a piece of music. This stemmed from his “3% rule”—the idea that you could produce a fresh concept by altering an base by just 3%.

Opening for just 10 days during the Parisian fashion scene at the prestigious venue—scarcity hype was a quintessentially Abloh strategy—the organized crowds outside on its launch suggest it wasn't simply the most sought-after event in town, but that it was absurd to think that Abloh's influence would simply vanish from fashion's slipstream after his death.