There were the multiple annual collections of Louis Vuitton, where he was the artistic director of men’s wear, and Off-White, his own label, which he’d founded while still in the orbit of Kanye West.
Seemingly no one posted more than he did — a couple dozen images on his story, easily, consisting of new designs, new music, screen grabs of conversations, fit pics posted by the super-famous, fit pics posted by the unknown.
What he was doing wasn’t flaunting his ubiquity and success, but rather offering up the blueprint for how to replicate it.
Mr. Abloh, who died on Sunday at 41, repurposed this ethic from hip-hop and skateboarding, two cultural pursuits premised upon the provocative and ultimately correct misuse of what came before.
In this, he was part of a profound lineage.
In Louis Vuitton stores right now, for example, there is a stunning pattern-quilted leather jacket inspired by the ones made by the Detroit store Al Wissam that were a hip-hop staple at the end of the 1990s into the early aughts.
Atop Louis Vuitton, he suddenly became the template for a generation of young designers, stylists and fashion dreamers who came up in the Abloh mold, an astonishing victory.
And while he reached out to elders to work together in various formats — Arthur Jafa, Goldie, Futura and more — Mr. Abloh also displayed a granular interest in other people’s creativity, especially young people.
Rather, it’s in the establishment of a universe in which Mr. Abloh wasn’t just a fashion designer but a folk hero and a superhero.
That was a position he understood all too well.
In his public lectures and conversations, which often ricocheted around social media as rapidly as his sneaker designs, he discussed what he called the “three-percent rule”: Altering something ever so slightly, he insisted, was more than enough.
He was modern in his process — he conducted most of his business over WhatsApp — and embraced the transparency of the social media era and made it part of his business and aesthetic plan.
When Drake needed a design for his personal Boeing 767, he turned to Mr. Abloh, who rendered it the palette of a cloudy sky.
— in the 2010s, he seemingly flew around the world more to spin records than to work on collections — and who made music of his own.
In this, as in all things, he prioritized the power and innovation of Black art.
When he had his first museum exhibition in Chicago in 2019, he installed a work referencing the police killing of Laquan McDonald amid the advertisements and sneakers .
The hug the two men shared at the conclusion of his first Vuitton presentation was one of the most nakedly emotional moments to occur on a runway in recent years, and also a euphoric release celebrating the ascent of a Black designer to the highest realms of luxury fashion.
It acknowledged that the sort of cross-pollinated cultural engineering Mr. Abloh naturally excelled at was indeed the most promising path forward, even for a company as steeped in tradition as LVMH.
He sold T-shirts that read “I Support Young Black Businesses” and donated the proceeds to charity.
So many seeds, sprinkled in so many places, guarantee flowers for generations to come.