Just in: The Kanye collaborator, Off-White CEO and newly appointed Louis Vuitton menswear’s designer and artistic director Virgil Abloh is the subject of the next major retrospective at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The Chicago-bred DJ, designer and all-round creative dynamo follows in the footsteps of the likes of American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham and the inimitable David Bowie, whose retrospectives have previously been held at the museum. The exhibition, aptly provisionally titled “Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech” (his signature quotation marks included), has been two years in the pipeline and will open its doors to the public next June. We’re over the moon with the fact that the between half and three quarters of show will reportedly be made up of fashion. Alongside displaying his early work for Donda, Kanye West’s creative agency, Pyrex Vision and Been Trill, the exhibition will chronicle Off-White and, of course, that Ikea collab. And we can only hope to spot the plastic monogram bag from his first show at the helm of Louis Vuitton. In addition to his extensive archive, Virgil will be creating pieces exclusively for the exhibition, which sadly won’t be for sale. A year seems like a long time to wait, but there’s plenty of Virgil to go around in the run up to the show. Off-White, LV, Nike… the Virgil shopping list is endless.
