Things like “influence” and importance are watery concepts. But it’s easy to see that the Milan-based fashion brand Off-White has 5.4 million Instagram followers and that founder Virgil Abloh has 3.1 million. It’s easy to see that Rihanna wears these clothes, and that the Nike Air Prestos designed by Abloh and released this summer were mentioned more than 250,000 times on social media and were so hard to buy that they are now available on resale apps at markups of around 450 percent.
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. A shoelace on a $700 pair of sneakers with the word “Shoelaces” written on it, in quotes. A scarf with “scarf” written on it in quotes.
Off-White makes plenty of clothes that are what you might recognize as high fashion, but it’s better known for things like $1,000 sweatshirts; pricey, tongue-in-cheek phone cases; buzzy collaborations that help fuel the $1 billion sneaker resale industry; its signature, seemingly nonfunctional industrial-themed belts; and its … experimental furniture.
As perplexing as it was when kids lined up and paid $1,000-plus to buy a literal brick released by Supreme two years ago, at least it was clear that it was in some ways a joke. Off-White isn’t a joke. It’s extremely expensive streetwear — primarily T-shirts and hoodies and sneakers — beloved by the teenagers of Reddit, the rich club kids of New York and Milan, the pop stars and rappers in every magazine and on every social media feed, and much of the high-fashion elite, including Abloh’s day-one fan Marc Jacobs. Also, Julia Roberts.
It is not at all a challenge to find people who will say Abloh is leading a cult of personality dependent on teens who don’t know better, that his undeniable historical significance as the most prolific designer of his generation is at odds with his seeming disinterest in giving anyone a good reason to care. Often, at his most earnest, he says things like, “We’re lucky to have a public that is now prime to support brands. In essence, we’re all independent brands and retailers.”
It’s rare that the question “what’s the deal?” feels fair or interesting, but, uh, what’s the deal?
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