The Royal College of Art and The Virgil Abloh Foundation have announced the launch of this year’s edition of the RCA Virgil Abloh Scholarship and said that MA Textiles student Tyreis Holder has been awarded the scholarship, beginning from the next academic year. 

A full scholarship, including maintenance support, is awarded to “extraordinarily talented but financially restricted Black British students from programmes in the School of Design”.

Holder said: “Virgil Abloh is a creative visionary, who empowered and inspired a generation of Black youth to embrace the limitless potential of their creativity and where it can take you. Being awarded this scholarship is a real honour, I feel truly blessed to have the opportunity to further refine my art practice by pushing the boundaries of my creativity, to honour my Caribbean heritage and textiles roots, and contribute to the community with recognition from the Virgil Abloh Foundation.”

Abloh, who died in 2021, was a multi-hyphenate creative, including artistic director of Louis Vuitton‘s menswear collection, the first African American to hold this position. He was also the founder of Milan-based fashion house Off-White, and Alaska Alaska, his London studio staffed by young, multi-disciplinary creators, handpicked by Abloh himself.

He had strong links to the RCA having joined as an Honorary Visiting Professor in 2020 and the college said that “in the short time he was associated with [us], he made a significant impact on the RCA community”. 

The scholarship aims to recognise his “support for education, his career-long ethos of using his practice to create social change and his position as a renowned champion for equality of opportunity across the creative industries”.

It applies to all areas of the RCA School of Design post-graduate study including Fashion, Textiles, Design Products, Service Design and Intelligent Mobility among other innovative courses. 

Last year’s recipient was Oghenerume Egbeniyoko, who continues to be supported by the initiative as he enters his second year of study on the RCA’s MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering programme.