The First Annual Abloh Skateboarding Invitational in Miami

On a humid Sunday afternoon in Miami, long after most of the art-world insiders and assorted partiers had returned north, an all-star field of pro skateboarders capped off Art Basel with a rowdy skate jam at a park under the I-95 freeway. The event was held to honor Virgil Abloh, who in both life and work had established extraordinarily deep roots within the notoriously insular world of skateboarding.

Organized by Architecture, Abloh's Nike-housed creative studio, the first annual Abloh Skateboarding Invitational drew a rare cross-section of skaters that transcended generations, specialties, and sponsors, with American Olympians (Zion Wright) competing in cash-for-tricks sessions against uber-stylish street skaters (Ishod Wair) and industry trailblazers (Sal Barbier). "It's a pretty heavy group of talent," said American skate legend Eric Koston, who co-hosted the event. As a pioneer of modern street skating, Koston knows better than anyone that skateboarding isn't always a kumbaya type scene. But he found it remarkably easy to get the sport's luminaries and young guns alike to take part. "Everybody dropped everything to be a part of this event. Everyone's badge was ripped off and thrown on the floor essentially just to come together and do that for Virgil and for the community," Koston said.

After all, they were celebrating one of their own. Abloh occupied a unique position in the skate world as an enthusiastic amateur who managed to vault to the center of the scene as a trusted collaborator and friend. The event, according to photographer Atiba Jefferson, "really shows Virgil's effect on skateboarding, and what he did for skateboarding and the respect he has in skateboarding."

The seeds of Abloh's legacy in the skateboarding world were sown early in his life. "Skate was the first thing that he really fell in love with as a child," said Virgil's wife, Shannon Abloh, a few days before the invitational. "It influenced so much of his design practice and who he was as a person." Mahfuz Sultan, the co-director of Architecture and one of Abloh's closest collaborators, put it this way: "Virgil was first and foremost a skater. He wasn't a basketball player, he wasn't a track athlete." In other words, Abloh approached his seemingly endless stream of projects armed with a lifetime of subcultural style references and a gritty, DIY sensibility all pulled from this one specific world. "The entire attitude of his Nike Off-White collaborations had this underlying skate energy-the writing on his shoes, the laissez-faire attitude to them being clean or together," said Sultan.

Abloh also brought skateboarding firmly into the fold of high fashion, which had long taken direct (if not directly credited) inspiration from the youth culture around skating, incorporating skaters into his shows and campaigns for Off-White and, in a first for the French house, Louis Vuitton. Several of those guys, like Robert Neal, who modeled in an LV campaign at Abloh's invitation, were at Sunday's event. "He put skateboarders on such a high pedestal in the fashion world," said Jefferson. "Skateboarding is a tight-knit crew that kind of stays in skateboarding, but every project that Virgil was a part of that involved skateboarding brought the culture to a different light.

As Abloh surely would have wanted, the invitational was open to the public, and thanks to Miami skate shop Andrew, word got around quickly, meaning dozens of local skaters and kids-including Virgil and Shannon's son-showed up to skate alongside their idols. "It's about inviting everyone in, everyone being a part of it, and just enjoying [Virgil] and being able to take little bits of his legacy and and move it forward," said Shannon. Plenty of tricks sent the crowd into fits, according to Koston: "Dashawn Jordan did an insane kickflip that shut the whole demo down. That's a lasting memory for a lot of kids that witnessed that." The co-host's enduring impression, though, was one of gratitude for a singular figure who had-and has-a unique gravitational force. "Getting us all together and doing that for him and for this community-it was a really special event," Koston said. See how it went down on the ground with this exclusive portfolio of photographs from Atiba Jefferson.