Off-White to Reinstate Paris Show
The return to Paris Fashion Week this February will be ‘fun and playful,’ said CEO Cristiano Fagnani. ‘Youth comes first, with our connection to culture and style.’
Ib Kamara is a modern-day fashion Renaissance man — a stylist, editor, curator and, as of 2022, head of Off-White. (First, he was art and image director. Now, he’s creative director.) He’s led the brand’s creative following founder Virgil Abloh’s passing in 2021, and while those are difficult shoes to fill, Kamara’s wide breadth of skills and curiosity make him an apt successor to a force like Abloh, who himself wore many hats and challenged himself to work across mediums. He’s continuing not only the late designer’s legacy, but also his knack at translating global inspirations into a directional contemporary collection.
After a season off the Paris Fashion Week calendar, Off-White staged a runway at the Le Carrousel du Louvre on Thursday. The invitation — by far one of the most creative I’ve seen in my time — came in a box that opened up into a Ludo game board. The runway itself reflected this, too, with the patterns on the floor and the blown-up bedazzled dice serving as a backdrop for the models.
In the show notes, the brand wrote that it was “imagining fashion with a capital F, as in FUN,” pulling inspiration from the “cross-pollination” we see when we travel, how Americana influences can be felt across the globe and how those references so often are shaped by Black culture.
“African American culture is loud, it’s optimistic, it’s fun, it’s cool — it’s culture,” Kamara said backstage. “The Off-White woman and man is a global citizen, and I wanted to express that. It’s American, it’s African, it’s east, it’s west. It’s well-traveled. It’s street, and I think street is a universal language. As you travel from country to country, there’s always a street energy that Off-White evokes. I wanted to push that.”
Kamara takes a more-is-more approach not just with the “fun and youthful” motifs — stars, flowers, dice, butterflies and signature arrows that appear across the ready-to-wear (on T-shirts, as patches on leather jackets, on knits, as 3D embellishments on jackets and printed over checked patterns) — but also color, leading to some unexpected pairings: mint green with chocolate brown, red with black, lilac with dusty pink.
The Fall 2024 collection also uses color and motif as vehicles to play with stereotypical ideas of gender expression. The womenswear palette is dark and punchy, with blacks, reds, greys and yellows; it also features caged panels, beaded fringe and cross-over draping that evokes strength and confidence. The men’s looks embrace softer hues, like pastels, and textures, like faux fur, knits and delicate butterflies.
“I feel like the Off-White boy is cute and cool, the girl is sexy and fun,” Kamara explained. “I wanted to differentiate them, but also [show] they can both live in the same universe, date each other, go out for coffee. I wanted to make sure that there are two points of view, but that they coexist within Off-White.”
In another nod to Americana, there are Wilson basketballs, both carried in special netted bags and deconstructed and reimagined as padded sneakers. Also, “Bootylicious” as the final walk song? No notes.
