While last night’s Grammy Awards were certainly less chaotic than the Academy Awards the weekend before, they didn’t go down without incident. As Complex reports, the Recording Academy is being hit with significant backlash online for its troublesome tribute to the late Virgil Abloh.
“Hip Hop Fashion Designer” was what the Grammys chose to remember the late 41-year-old as, despite the fact that he founded his own fashion label, the wildly successful Off-White, and worked as artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear sector for several years prior to his death.
Abloh also worked with mainstream brands like IKEA and Nike throughout his career after receiving a Master of Architecture degree from Illinois’ Institute of Technology – and that was before he even entered the world of fashion.
“Very disrespectful for the Grammys to call Virgil Abloh a ‘Hip Hop Fashion Designer’… The micro-aggressive racism we see in fashion and entertainment today still baffles me,” one frustrated user shared on Twitter. “It’s like a racially-charged sneak diss or something,” another person wrote, sharing a clip of Ye speaking on a similar matter during his Drink Champs interview.
See more reactions to this year’s Recording Academy “In Memoriam” segment below.
very disrespectful for the grammys to call virgil abloh a “hip hop fashion designer”… the micro aggressive racism we see in fashion and entertainment today still baffles me
— 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞 (@arxhiiie) April 4, 2022
this is EXACTLY what the Grammys just did to Virgil Abloh
it’s like a racially-charged sneak diss or something@RecordingAcad get your shit together pic.twitter.com/IbahF0sNmE
— daniel h ⛷ (@daniels_visions) April 4, 2022
Calling Virgil Abloh a “Hip-Hop Fashion Designer” is insanely disrespectful and blindly ignorant… do better pic.twitter.com/zHXLhZB6vv
— Debating Hip-Hop (@DebatingHipHop_) April 4, 2022
In the 2022 Grammy Awards’ “In Memoriam” segment, Virgil Abloh was described simply as a “Hip Hop Fashion Designer” — a seemingly incongruous label compared to what the Abloh amassed in his career https://t.co/kH1wzztqhl
— The Cut (@TheCut) April 4, 2022
The list of accomplishments Virgil Abloh had in fashion, art, architecture, music, etc just to get Grammy called him "hip hop fashion designer" smh. "it is equivalent when white people said the N word to black people" – Kanye pic.twitter.com/IZkt1m5Exw
— hayden99 (@haydenye99) April 4, 2022
The Grammys calling Virgil Abloh a "Hip Hop Fashion Designer"…big yikes
— Jacob Gallagher (@jacobwgallagher) April 4, 2022
The way that everyone is collectively so angry about “Virgil Abloh, hip hop fashion designer” like HOW did that even get approved by multiple people????
— LOUIS (@LOUIS_via_ROMA) April 4, 2022
