Virgil Abloh (/ˈæbloʊ/; September 30, 1980 – November 28, 2021) was an American fashion designer and entrepreneur. A trained architect, Abloh founded his own line of luxury streetwear clothing under the moniker Pyrex Vision in 2012, which he transformed into the Milan based fashion label Off-White in 2013. Abloh was appointed artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection beginning in 2018 and was given increased creative responsibilities across the LVMH brand in early 2021. Abloh worked in Chicago street fashion before he entered the world of international fashion with an internship at Fendi in 2009, alongside American rapper Kanye West. Abloh assumed the role of creative director at Donda, West's creative agency in 2010.

Abloh joined LVMH in 2018, where he became the first African-American artistic director of a French luxury fashion house. He was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world that year. Abloh's design aesthetic, which bridged streetwear and luxury clothing, was described as transformative by The New York Times. According to The Wall Street Journal, he reached a level of global fame unusual for a designer, and as an influential figure, according to the BBC.

Virgil Abloh was born on September 30, 1980, in Rockford, Illinois, to Ewe parents from Ghana. His mother was a seamstress and his father managed a paint company. From his mother, he learned how to sew. Abloh was raised in Rockford, where he attended Boylan Catholic High School, graduating in 1998. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2002 with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. He received his Master of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2006. When Abloh was attending IIT, there was a building on campus under construction designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas (who had also worked on runway collections for Prada). Koolhaas's building helped spark his interest in fashion. Abloh was further inspired by Crown Hall, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Abloh's master's thesis project involved a design for a Chicago skyscraper, which curved in the direction of Lake Michigan. While studying architecture, he also designed T-shirts and wrote on fashion and design for a blog, The Brilliance. Abloh first met musician Kanye West while working on his designs at a Chicago print shop.

After getting his architecture degree, Abloh interned at Fendi in the same class as rapper Kanye West in 2009. Placed in the company's Rome, Italy office, the two began a collaborative relationship. During his work with the rapper and designer, Abloh caught the eye of the Louis Vuitton CEO, Michael Burke. Later that year, Abloh and West's artistic partner, Don C, launched a retail store, called the RSVP Gallery, located in Chicago. The store became known for carrying a mixture of fashion apparel, and for its reflection of Abloh's style on his design for the store interior. A year later, West appointed Abloh the creative director of his creative agency, Donda.

In 2011 West asked him to serve as the artistic director for his 2011 collaborative album with Jay-Z Watch the Throne, earning the designer a Grammy nomination. In 2012, Abloh designed the cover art for WZRD's self-titled debut. In 2012, Abloh launched his first company, Pyrex Vision. He purchased deadstock clothing from Ralph Lauren for $40, screen-printed designs on them and sold them for prices upward of $550. He closed the company down a year later as he did not intend it to be a commercial enterprise, but an artistic experiment.

In a large part streetwear is seen as cheap. What my goal has been is to add an intellectual layer to it and make it credible

Abloh founded his first fashion house and second business overall in 2013 with the high-end streetwear brand Off-White, designing a logo inspired by Ben Kelly. Based in Milan, Italy, the company was described by Abloh as "the gray area between black and white as the color off-white" to investors and fashion critics. During the launch of his brand, he received help from the New Guards Group, who also assisted many other designers and brands, such as Palm Angels, Heron Preston, and Marcelo Burlon. Abloh said his first Off-White collection was inspired by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's floating glass home, Farnsworth House, and presented it with references to the Baroque artist Caravaggio and the early 20th century German design studio The Bauhaus. The brand lead generated widespread attention for his apparel beginning in Paris, then expanding to China, Japan, and the United States. The clothing line can be identified through its use of quotation marks, zip-ties, capital letters, and barricade tape. He launched the company's women's wear line in 2014 and showed the collections at Paris Fashion Week. His line was selected as a finalist for the LVMH Prize, an industry award, but lost to Marques'Almeida and Jacquemus. Abloh launched his first concept store for Off-White in Hong Kong in 2014. He opened his second store in Tokyo, Japan, where he started the company's furniture arm, Grey Area, followed by stores in Singapore and New York. Through Abloh's re-designing he exercised his self-made rule of only editing the shoes 3% of the way because he was intrigued by still maintaining the original design of the shoe.

By the end of 2018, an index of sales and consumer sentiment ranked Off-White as the hottest label in the world, surpassing Gucci. Virgil also partnered up with the Swedish furniture company IKEA to design furniture for apartments and houses as well as easy to carry tote bags with the word sculpture imprinted in the middle. The collection was named Markerad, which is a Swedish word meaning "clear-cut; crisp; pronounced", and was released in 2019. Virgil envisioned that the collection would include practical furniture featuring contemporary designs. In 2017, he was asked to design a new collection in conjunction with Nike entitled "The Ten" and he re-designed a variety of the company's best-selling shoes. Abloh worked towards fulfilling his vision for the IKEA collection by sketching out drafts of generic pieces of furniture, while adding his own aesthetics to the designs by using a doorstop to level out furniture items. Abloh worked on designs for chairs, coffee tables, beds, storage cabinets, mirrors, and carpets as part of his collaboration with IKEA. Abloh used quotation marks to convey detachment from society and social norms. During the rise in neo-nationalism in 2017 Abloh worked with conceptual artist Jenny Holzer to create a line emphasizing the positive aspects of immigration, cultural integration, and globalization. In December 2017, he worked with Holzer again to design T-shirts for Planned Parenthood in response to the Women's March on Washington.