Virgil Abloh's last show was the closing of a circle

Last night (it was five o'clock in America, but midnight in Italy) Louis Vuitton's SS22 show was staged in Miami - a particularly important show as it was the last one organized under the artistic direction of Virgil Abloh before his untimely death. Art directing Louis Vuitton was Abloh's great masterpiece, the high point of a career that, until a few months before the sad news last Sunday, was poised to take another flight among LVMH's top executives, a position that would allow him to extend his mentorship and support of young designers across the entire luxury industry. But the story of Abloh's death is a story with many other stories inside, a set of events that last night saw their ideal closure in what was more than a fashion show, resembling to all intents and purposes a final farewell in which everything found a fulfillment.

The collection, told in a setting simple in its complexity, seemed to be the summa of Abloh's work in the French fashion house, bringing to the highest point the work of the designer from 2018 to date in a set of infuences in which more or less small stories were intertwined, moments that told Virgil Abloh in all its facets. Not only the designer, celebrated in an event that will remain in the history of the fashion system, but also the musician, the creative and the man. Because there, as many had hoped, there were really all those who had shared an incredible life with Virgil Abloh, pioneers of a generation that we now live without even realizing it, the founding fathers of that abstract concept that we call "streetwear" and that Virgil Abloh has redefined with his work. There was Kid Cudi on the runway, as well as in the June 21, 2018 show in the Palais-Royale gardens, but there were also Ye, Pharrell, Jerry Lorenzo, Don C, Samuel Ross, Matthew Williams, Sean Wotherspoon and many, many others. Someone defined it as a funeral, a last public farewell to pay the right tribute to the work of Abloh, but perhaps it would be better to say that last night closed a circle started in 2009 at Paris Fashion Week and enclosed in a post by Lorenzo in which the caption "only we know the bond that holds us together" tells in a few words the true story behind what we saw last night.

To have witnessed this moment was a privilege, probably one of the greatest we'll have in this world, because if last night Ye and the others gave their last goodbye to their dearest friend, maybe in those twenty minutes of show we were all part of that big family, a heterogeneous group with no name and full of different faces that went from ecstasy for the last look at Abloh's work to bright eyes in front of the final fireworks or Virgil's team on the catwalk. Last night a circle was closed, we were there (even if only virtually) and it was great.