Off White
By Hayden Lu
Industrial style and plastic price tags are just some of the many words that describe Off-White. The person behind all of these upscale designs is Virgil Abloh, the founder and designer of this streetwear brand. Abloh was born on September 30th, 1980 in Rockford, Illinois. He originally aimed to become an architect at the Illinois Institute of Technology, hence the industrial theme in his designs. However, little did he know, that he would be using these skills later on in his career. When Abloh was young, his mother worked as a seamstress and this inspired Abloh to consider fashion design.
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His first recognition for his unique talent was from Kanye West. In the early 2000s, the two of them worked together to create various album photos for Kanye, including, the ‘Graduation’ album, ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ album, the ‘Watch the Throne’ album, and many more for other artists. Kanye wanted to include rap and fashion in the design of his covers, so Virgil was the perfect person for this job. Kanye continued to be interested in his work, so they worked together throughout the whole early 2000s.
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Pyrex Vision was Virgil Abloh’s first company launched in 2012. He took Ralph Lauren plaid shirts and printed Pyrex 23 on them. The 23 represented Abloh’s role model as a young child, Michael Jordan. He paid $40 for each shirt and sold them at $550. At first, I thought that this was a lot of money to be selling flannel shirts for. However, as a person who makes clothes myself, I can understand why Abloh would be selling them for high prices. It takes a lot of time and effort to create his own designs as a young designer without any previous experience.
In 2013, Virgil Abloh founded the Milan luxury label, Off White. Interestingly enough, he was even seen in Paris Fashion Week that same year he started the brand. This brand includes a unique style of industrial streetwear with quoted words on most designs. For example, the words ‘Little Black Dress’ is printed on one of his famous black dress designs, and on the shoelaces of his sneakers, it prints ‘shoelaces’. This is one of the most unique yet simple details that I have seen in any brand. Four years later, Off-White had one of their first collaborations with Nike called, ‘The Ten’. They designed ten pairs of shoes that overall had structures that were based on some of the original designs from Nike. These styles were extremely difficult to purchase because of how popular they were. Even some celebrities bought a few, such as David Beckham, DJ Khaled, and even Justin Beiber. From 2018 to 2021, Abloh was announced as the Men’s Artist Directed for the designer brand, Louis Vuitton. Working at a more well-known brand like Louis Vuitton, gave Abloh the opportunity to let people around the world know what his style is like and how he stands out compared to other designers.
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Unfortunately, Abloh died from cardiac angiosarcoma on November 28, 2021, at the age of 41. You might be wondering who the new designer is now. Well in May 2022, Off-White announced their new image and art director, Ib Kamara. Off White has yet to become one of the popular streetwear brands today, but once more people find out about this brand, they will become obsessed with it.
September 2022