With COVID-19 is currently preventing most things from happening in a traditional manor, improvisation is at an all-time high. So when Virgil Abloh put together the Louis Vuitton Men’s Spring-Summer 2021 Show for Shanghai, he commissioned a Lauryn Hill performance that required very little travel from her New Jersey home.
While the August 6 fashion show was actually done with an audience, travel restrictions prevented both the $50 legend and Ms. Hill from traveling. Recorded in late July, the 20-minute performance aired during the show from a large screen above the runway and now it’s available on LV’s YouTube. A fully-masked band is featured in the Naima Ramos-Chapman-directed clip as the former Fugees frontwoman performs six tracks including her 1998 classic “Doo Wop (That Thing)” and her most recent single, “Guarding the Gates.”
In the YouTube description, Abloh added, “Ms. Lauryn Hill is, to me, forever a muse.”
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The usually-private Hill took to Facebook to speak out earlier this month after her daughter with Rohan Marley, Selah, made an Instagram video speaking at length about enduring trauma growing up and the things she was subjected to. Defending her daughter’s right to express how she feels, Ms. Hill also defended her actions and explained her side.
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“Uhhhh black people, what???” she began. “Selah has every right to express herself, I encourage it, but she also got the discipline that black children get because we are held to a different standard. The discipline was seen through the lens of a young child who also had no place to reconcile me as mom, and me as a larger than life public figure. It took me a while to realize that my children, and probably everyone who knew me saw me in this duality. To me, I am just me. If I am guilty of anything it is disciplining in anger, not in disciplining.”
Watch Lauryn Hill’s performance up top.
