Evolving Off-White After Virgil Abloh

Ibrahim Kamara on Virgil Abloh’s fashion legacy and bringing the brand he built to New York Fashion Week.

When, not long after the designer Virgil Abloh’s unexpected death, New Guards Group, the company that manufactured Off-White, Abloh’s fashion label, approached Ibrahim Kamara about taking over the house, no one was more surprised than he.

Kamara was not, after all, a designer. He had never considered being a designer. He was a stylist and the editor of Dazed magazine; he had dreamed of being a musician when he was a child growing up in Sierra Leone and Gambia, and his work explored the bleeding edge of gender, politics and self-expression.

Sure, he had gone to Central Saint Martins, the art and design school in London (to where he and his family had immigrated when he was 16). Sure, he had been working with Abloh at Off-White and Louis Vuitton menswear, but for only two years. There were plenty of people who did not think Abloh could be replaced at all, that he was too singular a cultural figure.

But then, Kamara said recently, he thought V — he called Abloh V — “invented a whole new expression of what fashion can be for a generation of kids, and it’s important that it continue.” So he said yes. For him, he said, “Off-White is a concept, and concepts can evolve.”

Exactly how it has evolved will become clear Sunday, when Kamara, now 34, brings his version of Off-White to New York Fashion Week for the first time, holding his show on the community basketball courts of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

And Off-White is coming not just to New York Fashion Week, but to New York institutions: Casa Magazines, the downtown magazine store, will sell a special issue of Dazed with an Off-White cover and a special Off-White x Casa tote bag through the end of fashion week; and Joe’s Pizza, the West Village slicerama, will offer pies in an Off-White pizza box, sold by employees in Off-White x Joe’s T-shirts, for a month. (Kamara was also playing around with making an Off-White pizza, but he loves sardines and recognises that, as a pie topping, they may not be to everyone’s taste.)

“Every generation has a stylist who becomes a catalyst and sets a new tone for fashion image-making,” said Jefferson Hack, CEO of Dazed Media. “Ib is this.” Also, he said, “like Virgil, he is a natural delegator and connector, someone who radiates positive energy.”

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: Were you scared to step into Virgil’s shoes?

A: I had some mixed feelings because, obviously, I had my own career and my own aspirations. But I’ve always had an interest in making clothes. As a stylist, I’ve always cut things up, made a silhouette, made a shape. I was already working with the Off-White team, so it felt like I could grow with them. And V proved there are many different ways to be a designer now.

He made a space with different rules. And I think having a space that exists not by the book is very relevant now. My background, the people I worked with, like stylists Barry Kamen and Simon Foxton, also did everything. They had taste, they invented things. So in the end I was like, “Yeah, I could do this.” But I understood that I needed time to find myself within that role, to find my point of view.

Q: Time rarely seems to come into play when we are talking about designers and fashion houses.

A: That’s true.

Q: So how do you define your Off-White?

A: I’m working at an American brand, founded by an African American man, made in Milan and shown in Paris. It’s already very global. To that I’m adding Africa, my British experience, clubbing in London, seeing so much culture around me. I had to infuse that into modern clothing, but from a point of view that is rich in a culture that maybe is not referenced enough or not referenced by the right people. I look at Off-White as a melting pot of ideas.

A: It’s a merge: The codes that V left, like the arrow, the quotes, the diagonals, all the graphics, but paired with a skirt with very African draping or embroidery, and just a T-shirt. I’m doing a lot of African hand-painting in this collection. I went to Ghana for three weeks, just living like a local, going to the market in Accra, seeing the colours, the denims, the embroidery. It’s punk in my head in terms of clashing American, British, African. Punk democracy. And for me, the clothes could be for someone working in Accra and working in downtown Manhattan.

Q: Would you call yourself a designer now?

A: Yes.

Q: How hard was it to get there?

A: I have white hair.

Q: Well, white-blond. And it’s dyed. I assume you are speaking metaphorically?

A: That’s how quickly I had to grow. Because it’s also understanding business, understanding consumer markets, understanding trends, understanding colour palettes. I never had to deal with the inside of clothes. Now I have to think about the price of the lining. I have to think about legal. I called the T-shirt in my last collection “Go Ask Legal,” because that’s the toughest department. These are things that you don’t learn in art school.

Q: Why bring it to New York? Virgil may have been American, but he decided to show in Paris to prove that the brand could stand up in a high-fashion context.

A: For me, this is the brand coming home. It’s something that V wanted to do for a long time. He talked about it. We’ve been trying to bring it to the U.S. for the past two years. A year ago, I designed a whole collection that got dropped because we had to postpone the show. I think it’s important to bring the brand closer to the American market, the American point of view, because ultimately it is an American brand.

Q: What is America to you?

A: This beacon of imaginative hope. In the ‘90s, when I grew up, everybody was playing the lottery. Come to the US because you have a better life. You have freedom, you have education. Now we are returning that sense of life, joy, community. I think it’s important for Off-White to have a New York moment and fill the city with optimism. I’m really invested in the city. I don’t just see this as a one-time thing. I would love to come back in February.

Q: Explain the basketball court. Do you play?

A: Not really. But when I moved to London, I had no friends. I was alone in some crazy house, with my parents going to work. My mum is a nurse, my dad is in security. I spoke great English, but I had a funny accent. And I always had this idea that as an immigrant, I made friends quicker on the playground. When young people play, they make connections quicker. So that’s what the basketball court represents.

It’s also sports, which is American. It’s also music. You know, there’s a lot of music that goes on in those spaces. Then I was trying to understand: What is the first sound you hear when you come to New York? What is the noise of New York? Is it horns? Is it a siren? Is it construction? What is that sound that your memory goes right to whenever you hear it?

Q: You are calling the collection Duty Free. Is that a reference to immigration? That’s kind of a touchy subject right now.

A: Well, I like to be a bit naughty, so I sneak things in there. But for me, duty free is, like, you’re off-duty. You’re going to New York. You’re cool. You’re young. You’re fab. But also you had to get on a plane to come, so you had to go through “duty free.” We had all these plane earrings made for the collection. I was also going to use “fresh off the boat,” but legal said I couldn’t.

Q: What do you think Virgil would say?

A: “Just keep going.” When we worked together at Vuitton, I would show him the styling, and he would just say: “Perfect. Let’s go.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Vanessa Friedman

©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES

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