April 14, 2022 |
The opportunity to be part of Virgil Abloh’s legacy is yours to take at The Fondation Louis Vuitton this April. Embodying the creative brilliance of the house’s late menswear artistic director, Coming of Age is an interactive exhibition that pays tribute to the founder’s groundbreaking impact on the fashion industry.
Beyond his work across fashion, music and architecture, Abloh held the torch for young Black creatives through his Post-Modern scholarship fund to financially support and mentor fashion students.
Coming to Paris for a fortnight, the experience is a reimagining and expansion of Abloh’s original Coming of Age exhibition curated in California back in 2019. Linked to the themes of youth explored in the puritanical-white tailoring and over-the-rainbow motifs within Abloh’s Louis Vuitton SS19 collection, the 2019 Coming of Age exhibition centred around exploring the intricacies of boyhood across race, class, religion and subculture. The pre-pandemic exhibition was taken globally with experiences traversing Seoul, Milan, Tokyo and beyond to allow students, artists and local communities to delve into building and creating their own zines from artworks featured in the exhibition space. Artists featured in the exhibition all captured the running themes of male youth and boyhood that Abloh set to explore; such as the juvenile yet surreal paintings of skateboarder Ed Templeton and the nostalgic photographs of Raimond Wouda.
This time around, the exhibition regroups and returns to the native land of Louis Vuitton in Paris, at The Fondation Louis Vuitton. With a fusion of exhibition spaces, physical events and digital activations, visitors are invited to become participants alongside creatives from various creeds to become a living embodiment of the designer’s mission: democratising the creative dream in his philosophy of unity within diversity. Faithful to Louis Vuitton’s spirit of travel, the digital activations will allow for global engagement with the exhibitions. Time to get stuck in.
‘Coming of Age’ is open until April 27, 2022. Reserve your free tickets here.
