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Much as one might follow an ocean-crossing low-pressure system on radar, we tracked Abloh on one of his recent (and frequent) loops around the Earth. On Monday night, Off-White held its first show since Abloh’s death at the age of 41 in late November. The Fall-Winter 2022 collection is reportedly the final one Abloh oversaw for the brand, and though the question of who—or what group of people—might take over the brand going forward remains unanswered, the presentation provided a strong indication of what Off-White will look like in the post-Abloh era. Off-White is the hottest brand in the world, according to the quarterly ranking released by the fashion and e-commerce platform Lyst.
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As a cutting-edge streetwear brand, the most desirable collaborations of the moment have all come from Off-White. To name but a few, the label collaborated last August with Nike, upgrading 10 of the brand’s most iconic models in a project called “The Ten”. For Spring/Summer 2018, Off-White partnered with Jimmy Choo for a line of silk heels covered in PVC and over-padded boots. Last October, the brand unveiled a collaboration with the hot streetwear concept-store Kith, designing nine exclusive pieces, from a deep black hoody to a grey sweatshirt through to a collection of t-shirts all printed with “Just Global”.
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It is also fair to say that whether Off-White’s designs are rip-offs will cease to be a very interesting question, as we sit back and watch more and more youth-craving fashion brands attempt to copy everything else about it. In this way, Dapper Dan first popularized the notion of luxury streetwear. Almost two decades later, Virgil Abloh founded Off–White, a luxury brand that catapulted streetwear into the realm of high fashion that Dapper Dan once sought to emulate. Since its founding in 2013, Off–White has amassed popularity at an almost exponential rate.
Designed alongside AMO.
Circles have been a recurring motif at Off-White, but these are more orderly than the meteors that bit holes into OW sportswear and accessories in recent seasons. They also appear as closures on men’s jackets made from what looks like bubble wrap, and as cut-outs on women’s knitwear. Abloh is benefiting from larger trends, such as the Instagram-driven return of logos, hip-hop’s ascendancy to be the dominant form of American popular music, and the rise of mass-produced “algorithmic” style — but he’s also spurring them, and capitalizing on them more robustly and quickly than anyone else. Off–White is one of the world’s most popular luxury brands— and its predominant aesthetic appears to be irony. Express will close 95 name brand stores along with all 12 UpWest retail locations (AP Photo/Andrew ... [+] Harnik).
Long-term creative advisor to rapper Kanye West, he launched his label, Off-White, in September 2013, which led to him becoming one of the finalists for the prestigious LVMH prize in 2015, which eventually went to the duo Marques’Almeida and the French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus. The world has changed profoundly for the Off-White design studio and the New Guards Group that produces the OW collections. Going forward, their job will be striking a balance between homage and honoring Abloh’s drive for constant forward movement. Designed before his passing, this collection makes good on the “more adult” Off-White, while also celebrating childhood and youthful games. If it were anybody else, that might sound like a post-mortem tweak of former detractors, but that’s not Abloh’s style. A brand rep described it as a playful endorsement of doing your own thing.
How Virgil Abloh made Off-White the hottest fashion brand in the world - Vox.com
How Virgil Abloh made Off-White the hottest fashion brand in the world.
Posted: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Collaborations
Born Daniel Day, he opened ‘Dapper Dan’s Boutique’ in 1989, in the midst of hip hop’s meteoric rise within pop culture. Yet, while rap coveted the exclusivity of luxury fashion, haute–couture brands shunned any such association with hip–hop artists for fear of alienating their target demographic. In response, Dapper Dan created one–of–a–kind counterfeits of upmarket brands, repurposing their logos and styles into extravagant, audacious original designs. The brand was founded in 2012, and its popularity isn’t new, but it’s now reaching heights that, to the idle but curious fashion observer, may be confounding. Its guiding principle is just “everything in quotes,” as in, “everything is ironic and also the main recognizable design element on the clothes is chunky quotation marks.” A black dress with the words “Little Black Dress” written on it, in quotes.
It seems dumb at first glance, and then you end up thinking about the humor in it, and then you end up thinking about society and the rules we live in, and capitalism and norms and wherever that leads you. Because it’s so simple and approachable, a lot of streetwear kids may think it’s deeper than it really is. Similar to Rick and Morty, it makes people feel smart, but is it really saying something about capitalism and society that already hasn’t been said?
No one can decide if it’s brilliant or hollow, but they’ll keep talking about it
Abloh has said it takes him 10 minutes to come up with many of his designs. He’s also said he wants to help Apple design the next iPhone. His aesthetic interests are simplicity and efficiency, his commercial interests are what could be called economically avant-garde — dramatic, cartoonish, garish markups of basic items marketed primarily to kids, by celebrities, turning unattainability into a sport and pastime. When he introduced Off-White’s “For All” diffusion line, it included four T-shirts and four hoodies that could only be purchased in brick-and-mortar stores in major cities, ranging in price from $95 to $170. Things like “influence” and importance are watery concepts.
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Garments accentuated only by their item names in quotation marks. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Many say it’s “aesthetically good stuff” but that they can’t get behind the “disingenuous” message of the brand. And boy, are the boys of Reddit ever aware of Off-White. There are only 2,000 members of the Off-White specific subreddit, but the 807,000 readers of the primary streetwear subreddit discuss it constantly. Fw18 men’s Off-White™ graphic crewneck fleece sweatshirt from collection titled “Business Casual”.
Part of Express’s motivation to file for bankruptcy is to help secure funding that could save the business in the long term. The company has confirmed that it received a non-binding letter of intent from a consortium led by WHP Global (“WHP”) and participants including a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of Simon Property Group Simon Property Group , L. P. (“Simon”) and Brookfield Properties (“Brookfield”) for the potential sale of a substantial majority of Express’ retail stores and operations. Simon Property Group and Brookfield Properties have extreme competence in real estate leasing and operations.
The company has been struggling over the past few years to keep up with consumer preferences, differentiating itself in the market with product offerings and fighting off intense competition in an over-stored U.S. market. Now, LVMH and New Guards Group, the Italian fashion conglomerate that operates and produces Off-White, appear set to continue building on Abloh’s vision. In comments published by Business of Fashion this morning, Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke, who has been working with New Guards co-founders Davide De Giglio and Andrea Grilli to steer Off-White, described plans to turn Off-White into an “eternal” brand he compared to Dior. “Off-White is in the position that Dior was in 1957,” Burke told BOF. “Monsieur Dior had only been at the house for 10 years when he died.
The designer decided to work with Ikea last October, unveiling the first images of the interior design collection on his Instagram, including an oriental rug in navy blue with white detailing and “Keep Off” written across it. The rest of the pieces from this exclusive collaboration will be revealed later this year - stay tuned. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.
The company’s losses mounted through last year, and by October of 2023, Express had tripled their losses compared to 2022. The company ended year-to-date in October 2023 with over $154 million in losses for 39 weeks. The company sales at that time were down 5.6% while inventory was up 32%. Gross Margins dropped from 30% in 2022 to 21.5% through October 2023. The company has not filed its fourth quarter and full-year annual financials which usually come out in March or April. Instead, the company has filed for bankruptcy protection and will continue its operations under debtor in possession status which means the company can continue its normal operations of business with the protection of the courts to help the company restructure its financial position.
Off-White, too, was conceived almost 10 years ago.” Christian Dior left a design legacy and values that continue to guide the house to this day, and according to De Giglio and Grilli, Abloh left an “endless” stream of ideas behind that they can build a lasting house around. “The next two years, we are going to go full-speed,” Grilli told BOF. A Chicago native born to Ghanaian parents, Virgil Abloh studied as a civil engineer at the University of Wisconsin, followed by a masters in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Couture is the height of fashion fantasy, but Abloh always had an instinct for making even the most expensive garments feel more accessible than aspirational. Abloh surely understood the pitfalls of trying to bring the romance of couture to the Zoomer generation. “Maybe Virgil is one of the greatest designers of our generation or maybe he’s just best friends with Kanye,” one user writes. “I like to think it’s somewhere in the middle.” Abloh represents a highly American tale of improbable work-driven success and highly probable celebrity-proximity, luck-driven success. Even before that, Diet Prada, the popular Instagram account known for semi-accurately calling out rip-offs in the fashion industry, pointed out that the Off-White logo was nearly identical to a 1965 Glasgow airport design created by a famous UK design group. It found a photo of Abloh in his office, with a copy of a modernist design book that had an entry about the logo in question, and also accused him of plagiarizing Calvin Klein’s Raf Simons and the Japanese label Anrealage.
The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Far from being hyperbolic, descriptions of him as the ‘designer who curated hip hop culture’ or the ‘original auteur of gangster chic’ ring true.
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