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A scholarship created in honor of the late designer Virgil Abloh will be expanded this year to have more recipients and a greater outreach beyond art and design schools.
According to reports, a scholarship fund that was created in honor of the late pioneering Black designer will be expanded. The Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund, which benefited 30 recipients, will now go to 60 recipients in addition to offering financial grants for those aspiring to become a part of the fashion industry. Shannon Abloh and Fashion Scholarship Fund Director, Peter Arnold, announced the plan at a gala held in New York City Monday (April 8). The expansion is a welcome move by the group, which admitted having potential students turn down scholarship offers in the past due to financial hardship. Virgil Abloh, best known for his work with Off White and Louis Vuitton, succumbed to cancer in 2021.
“Some have to work,” Ms. Abloh said. “They can’t quit their job and go to school. There was a student whose laptop broke, and she couldn’t afford to replace it, so she was going to drop out of school. That’s not OK,” Abloh said in an interview with the New York Times. The Scholarship Fund was started in 2020 with $1 million in seed funding by Virgil Abloh to foster the next generation of Black designers and creators in fashion. The expansion plan will also now be available to students at community colleges and other schools not in the art and design track. There will also be opportunities for students to connect with the vast network of friends and associates that Virgil Abloh worked with including Tremaine Emory and Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, the celebrated stylist who was an early FSF recipient. “Virgil was impatient,” Shannon Abloh said. “He liked to move fast, so he would have been ready for this to happen. It was always like, ‘How can we affect the most students in the biggest way possible?’”
There are also plans to expand the Virgil Abloh Foundation’s operations and reach within the year. “The goal will be providing access and opportunities to young kids, just as the V.A.P.M. does, but in a slightly different way,” she continued. “In 20 years I want the young kid who’s interested in creative arts to find Virgil. The foundation will provide a way for them to see his work and have access to what he created.”
