Shannon Abloh says pandemic allowed her ‘last two and a half years’ with husband Virgil before his death

Shannon Abloh, the wife of late Virgil Abloh, has broken her silence one year after the fashion designer’s death.

In a new interview with The New York Times, Ms Abloh opened up about her late husband’s passing from a rare form of cancer at just 41 years old. Now, Ms Abloh is president of the Virgil Abloh Foundation and the CEO of Virgil Abloh Securities, a creative corporation which continues the designer’s legacy and business ventures. But apart from being a businesswoman, Ms Abloh is also a mother to the couple’s nine-year-old daughter Lowe, and six-year-old son Grey.

As Virgil founded streetwear brand Off-White in 2013, and became creative director of Louis Vuitton in 2018, Ms Abloh stayed largely out of the spotlight. However, her tendency to remain private was “never a thing that we discussed,” she told The Times. “It was just the way our relationship worked.”

“We knew we wanted to build this close family, and we needed someone to be the stable partner,” Ms Abloh added. “I was happy to do that.”

The couple met in high school in Rockford, Illinois, when she was just 17 and the future designer was 18 years old. The two stayed together all throughout college, and were married in 2009.

In July 2019, Virgil learned he had cardiac angiosarcoma, a rare heart cancer. However, the fashion influencer decided to keep his health battle private until his passing on 28 November 2021.

“For over two years, Virgil valiantly battled a rare, aggressive form of cancer, cardiac angiosarcoma,” Virgil’s family said at the time. “He chose to endure his battle privately since his diagnosis in 2019, undergoing numerous challenging treatments, all while helming several significant institutions that span fashion, art, and culture.”

When asked why he decided to keep his illness private, Ms Abloh explained that her husband’s cancer progressed a lot quicker than they had expected. “It wasn’t like we knew that he was going to pass,” she told the outlet, adding that he didn’t want people to look at him and think: “Are you okay?’”

“Even though we knew the challenge of what he was fighting, it went a lot faster than we thought it was going to,” Ms Abloh said. “So we never had the ‘this is the legacy that I want you to work toward’ discussion. But because I was with him for so long, I knew every inch of him. I knew every inch of his brain.”

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, their family stayed at their weekend house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, during lockdown. Looking back, Ms Abloh said she was grateful to have been given undivided time with her late husband during his last two and a half years of life.

“I know that Covid was an incredibly hard thing for so many people,” she began. “But for us it was an amazing time because Virgil didn’t have to make excuses to get out of shows or DJ-ing. No one could go anywhere. So we were able to have those last two and a half years.”

Earlier this month, Ms Abloh accepted an award on behalf of Virgil at the Council of Fashion Designers of America. This week, Ms Abloh will launch a four-day festival during Miami Art Week in collaboration with Nike. The event will include music, discussions, and workshops to celebrate the designer’s life and ideas.

While Ms Abloh is at the helm of many creative endeavours honouring Virgil, she admitted that grieving the loss of her husband has altered her brain chemistry so that it’s “kind of hard to just sit and focus”.

“For probably the first six months of the year my short-term memory was gone,” she revealed. “I kept thinking: ‘Is this normal?’ It’s starting to feel a little clearer, and I’m able to, you know, get sentences out that make sense.”

However, she said it is also important to her that, in the future, their children are able to see “what their dad was able to do and that Mom really stepped up,” and that “through everything, through all the grief, she was able to pull it together and move forward”.

On the one-year anniversary of his death, many celebrities shared social media tributes remembering the legendary fashion designer. Gigi and Bella Hadid, and Hailey Bieber posted throwback photos of themselves with Virgil, while Serena Wiliams wrote in a lengthy Instagram caption about how his passing has brought up difficult emotions for her.

“It’s been a year and I still can’t put into words the sorrow that I feel,” she captioned the black and white image of the pair from a Nike campaign photoshoot. “Your touch on the world will live on forever and I couldn’t be more grateful to have witnessed it and had the chance to collaborate with you.”

“I still miss you all the time,” she concluded. “ Forever and ever”.