By World Licence 
The fashion world is preparing to pay a powerful and moving tribute to one of its most revolutionary figures. A unique exhibition dedicated to Virgil Abloh, visionary designer and cultural icon, will take place in Paris during the next edition of Fashion Week in September. More than just an artistic event, this exhibition promises to be a posthumous celebration of the spirit, genius, and influence of a man who marked his era with audacity, creativity, and determination.
Virgil Abloh, during his lifetime, broke the mold of an industry long stuck in its traditions. By founding the Off-White label, he proved it was possible to create a visual language capable of connecting the streets to the runways, young people from the banlieues to the elite of fashion houses. His multidisciplinary approach, blending architecture, music, contemporary art, and fashion design, profoundly influenced a generation of designers. By becoming the first African American to lead the Louis Vuitton menswear line, he not only broke a historical barrier he paved the way for others, establishing a new aesthetic and unprecedented sociocultural engagement in luxury fashion.
The exhibition, announced for September 2025 in Paris, promises to be an event rich in emotion and content. The organizers aim to offer the public an immersive journey retracing the key stages of his career: from his first collaborations with Kanye West in Chicago, to his iconic collections at Louis Vuitton, including the art objects and installations he designed for various museums around the world. Rare pieces, personal archives, sketches, audio recordings, and never-before-seen videos will be on display to truthfully convey the vision of a man who constantly pushed boundaries.
Beyond his artistic work, Virgil Abloh represented hope for many young people from minority backgrounds. He firmly believed in transmission, in education, and in the possibility of giving access to creativity to all those whom the system had for too long overlooked. His commitment to diversity and inclusivity still resonates today in the halls of major fashion houses and on streets around the world. This exhibition project, in the heart of the fashion capital, also aims to make visible this profoundly human dimension of his work.
It’s not simply about contemplating clothes or objects, but rather about entering into a conversation with a thought, a movement, a free spirit. The exhibition space will thus become a place of dialogue between generations, between cultures, between disciplines. It will also be an opportunity for his loved ones, his colleagues, and the young talents he supported to share their stories about the impact Virgil had on their lives and on the industry.
Choosing Paris as a setting is highly symbolic. It was in this city that Virgil Abloh found international acclaim; it was also here that, through his runway shows, he deconstructed established codes to rewrite a new grammar of fashion. This exhibition thus reflects the continuity of his work: it is not frozen in the past; it is focused on the future. It invites us to reflect on what it means to create today, in a changing world, at a time when the boundaries between disciplines are increasingly blurred.
As the world continues to mourn the untimely loss of this extraordinary designer, the exhibition, scheduled for Paris Fashion Week, is intended as an act of remembrance and transmission. It is also a gesture of love for art, youth, audacity, and the idea that nothing is impossible when you have a vision. Virgil Abloh lived as he created: intensely, freely, and with absolute faith in the power of ideas.
This retrospective will be both a moment of reflection and a manifesto of inspiration. A reminder that even after his departure, Virgil lives on.