Shannon Abloh, widow of fashion designer Virgil Abloh, revealed details about her husband’s fight with cancer.
In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Shannon Abloh spoke about his unexpected death.
“It wasn’t like we knew that he was going to pass,” she said.
Shannon Abloh also revealed how aggressive the cancer became.
“Even though we knew the challenge of what he was fighting, it went a lot faster than we thought it was going to,” she shared.
Due to Virgil Abloh’s diagnosis, Shannon Abloh said that they never had a discussion about his legacy.
“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,” she added.
Now, she is making sure that she keeps his legacy alive which she said belongs to her and his children.
She shared:
“After his passing, so many people came up to me and said, ‘Virgil was my best friend.’ His best friend in the fashion industry, his best friend in the music world. A lot of his collaborators, or even people who maybe weren’t that close to him, feel ‘I can do this to help his legacy, or I can do that to help his legacy.’ It’s like this train that’s going 500 miles per hour, and I just thought: I have to stay on this train, because if I don’t, I don’t know where it’s going to go. That’s my place and my position.”
She also spoke about how going through her husband’s many storage units, that he had worldwide, has helped her with her grief.
“I call it my grief work,” she said. “It helps me feel closer to him.”
Virgil Abloh died in 2021 after battling a rare form of cancer for two years called cardio angiosarcoma. He was 41 years old.
This form of cancer occurs in the heart tissue, according to Healthline.
On Nov. 28, 2021, the news of his passing was announced on his personal Instagram account.
“We are devastated to announce the passing of our beloved Virgil Abloh, a fiercely devoted father, husband, son, brother, and friend,” the post read.