Virgil Abloh's debuted his first-ever collection as Louis Vuitton’s men's artistic director during Paris Fashion Week. Kid Cudi walked during the show as Kanye's "I Thought About Killing You" played over the speakers, with a bit of his and Cudi's Kids See Ghosts opener "Feel the Love" interpolated.
Watch Cudi walk at around 3:45 mark in the video below.
BadBadNotGood also provided music for the fashion show, performing "IV," a new untitled song, Kanye's "I Thought About Killing You," and their own version of "Ghost Town."
This Thursday show is a monumental event for Paris Fashion Week, with all eyes on the 37-year-old artistic director. Abloh has come a long way from interning at Fendi with his longtime creative collaborator and close friend Kanye. As Ye's Cudi-featuring "Ghost Town" got a live instrumental rendition at the end of the show, Virgil walked straight out to Kanye (12:30 in the video above) for a long hug that clearly had both men emotional.
In March, Abloh became the first black artistic director for Louis Vuitton in the brand’s entire 164 years. Abloh took over the role after Kim Jones left the position. “To me, this is like my first show. Everything was sort of leading up to this. This is ‘life’s work’ territory, to distill, to be metaphoric in a poetic way,” he told WWD before his debut. He also compared the show to Martin Margiela’s historic debut. “For me it’s the same, but I gotta find myself, so this is myself on display and it’s simply about letting people see my silhouette.”
Ahead of his debut show, LV provided some behind-the-scenes looks at Abloh’s first collection on the newly launched IGTV platform. You can watch the 11-minute clip by downloading the IGTV app or updating the latest version of Instagram. It’s posted to the fashion house’s official @louisvuitton account.
“The elephant in the room is that I come from a different place, into this, like, storied lineage of fashion,” Abloh says at the beginning of the clip, reflecting on his appointment to the historic brand. “And what I wanna do is, I wanna be like in those Western movies where there be like one black cowboy. You’re like ‘I don’t understand where you came from.’ […] I kinda wanna deliver a message; be like, ‘Yeah, I come from this place.’ And this place has been usually labeled as streetwear.”
Before his LV show, Abloh shared his Spring 2019 collection for his brand Off-White. Read our review of that show here.
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