RIP Virgil, RIP Off-White.
I have never liked Off-White.
This seems worth establishing before I say something unexpectedly generous about its founder.
Virgil Abloh’s work often struck me as juvenile: quotation marks, diagonal stripes, industrial zip ties, words printed onto objects as though identifying shoelaces as “SHOELACES” made it any more interesting. In his work, one could easily notice there was an almost adolescent delight in pointing at familiar things, slightly—very slightly, emphasis on that—disrupting them, then expecting the industry to lose its breath. Abloh himself developed this into his famous “3%” approach—the idea that an existing object could be altered only slightly and become something new. He was never particularly private about his methodology.
I did not always find the result profound. I did, however, find the result important. Virgil understood something that considerably more accomplished dressmakers never do: it is entirely possible to make competent-looking clothes that frankly nobody cares about.
He explicitly understood rappers, athletes, Instagram, art schools, IKEA, Kanye West, Nike, Louis Vuitton and, most importantly, how to make all of those things participate in the same conversation at the same table. Off-White was less a fashion label than the headquarters from which Virgil conducted traffic. And traffic there was.
By the third quarter of 2018, Off-White had climbed 33 places in a year to become the number-one brand on Lyst’s global ranking, ahead of Gucci and Balenciaga. Its Nike collaboration produced the hottest men’s product of that quarter, while Off-White occupied three of the index’s twenty hottest-product positions. Farfetch would later disclose that in 2019 Off-White accounted for 75 percent of New Guards Group’s Brand Platform GMV.
Whatever I thought about his clothes, clearly a very large number of people wanted them. One should know when one has lost an argument with the market. Nonetheless, if we look at the market, I wouldn’t say its majority is distinguished by taste, class, or criteria.
Virgil’s influence extended far beyond selling sweatshirts. His impact on the legitimization of streetwear within luxury, his appointment at Louis Vuitton, and his ability to move almost frictionlessly between fashion and pop culture made him one of the defining industry figures of his period. He opened doors, particularly for a generation of Black creatives who had very rarely seen somebody with his background occupying that degree of institutional influence.
That achievement does not require me to pretend every dress was good.
Which brings us to Hailey Bieber.
Her wedding gown, made by the brand, reportedly took around a year to develop. There were three fittings. At least ten people worked on the veil and another ten on the dress. There was floral embroidery, lace, pearls, Off-White arrows, an enormous train, and the phrase “TILL DEATH DO US PART” embroidered across the veil. Although twenty artisans participated in the making, the result looked underwhelming. In simpler words—ugly. Not badly constructed. That would be difficult to establish and, given the atelier work involved, probably stupid to claim. Perhaps ugly is quite enough.
It was a conventional fitted lace wedding gown wearing the brand’s trademarks like a perfectly respectable bride who had been vandalized on her way to the church. The most memorable part of the design was a sentence printed on the veil. A year of development, twenty artisans, three fittings.
And yet… typography won.
This was always my problem with Virgil when the work moved away from the territory in which he was strongest. As ready-to-wear, product, collaboration and cultural relevance, his apparent simplicity could become his value proposition. When the assignment demanded the skill of dressmaking, however, the conceptual cleverness sometimes looked suspiciously like a disguise for the absence of it.
When it comes to making a dress, his talent could only get him so far. At making sure everyone sees the dress, his talent was undeniable.
Marketing is treated as a dirty word by people who do not understand fashion. Chanel did not become Chanel because Gabrielle tweeded a jacket. Fashion has always required association, social positioning, photography, and the sophisticated manipulation of desire. Virgil happened to understand the contemporary version of that system quite well.
The mistake Off-White now appears to be making is assuming that system belonged to the company.
As a creative, it belonged to him.
Ib Kamara departed Off-White on August 31—roughly 48 hours ago—after four years steering its creative direction following Abloh’s death. No successor has been named, and the house is not currently scheduled to stage a show this season. Ib Kamara was given one of fashion’s least enviable assignments: inherit a brand from a founder whose personality, friends, network and instincts had effectively constituted the brand’s DNA.
His final fall 2026 collection was actually thoughtful. He researched Miles and Betty Davis’s archive, translating polka dots into Off-White’s cutout language, mixing lace with technical nylon, working through 70s shapes and Davis’s performance clothes. There was research. There were clothes. There was something to potentially discuss.
Yet the problem remained. An Off-White collection happens, but everybody continues with their day. Under Virgil, even people like me who did not particularly like the brand were forced to have an opinion about it. Indifference is much worse than criticism. Criticism, at least, requires attention.
The corporate history since his death makes things even more curious. LVMH, which acquired a 60 percent stake in Off-White in 2021, sold Off-White LLC to brand-management company Bluestar Alliance in 2024 for an undisclosed amount. Today, Off-White LLC owns the intellectual property while Progetto 17 operates the brand under licence; the company’s own legal page carefully explains the distinction.
There is something funny about a brand whose website has to explain exactly which corporation owns the arrows.
The financial picture is less clear. Bluestar does not publish standalone Off-White revenue or profit, so declaring the company bankrupt or insolvent would be speculation. There are, however, signs of diminished altitude. Although luxury has never been a part of the brand’s essence.
The six Off-White stores that operated in China have closed. Virgil’s experimental EM PTY GALLERY in SoHo shut its doors in 2025; the brand said it would relocate, initially without providing a location or timetable. Meanwhile, Vogue reported late last year that sneakers—particularly the Out Of Office—accounted for close to half of Off-White’s sales. So I guess Off-White is not commercially absent.
It is perhaps a brand with recognizable assets looking for a reason to remain culturally necessary in a very subdued way.
Bluestar apparently has ideas. There is currently 10x10: Off-White Icons Reimagined, in which ten creatives—including Kid Cudi, Raul Lopez, Ava Nirui and Renell Medrano—are assigned ten recognizable Off-White categories and asked to reinterpret them. The company insists that the project is not an homage to the past but a continuation of the Off-White “revolution.”
Sure.
Nothing says innovation quite like ten people being asked to redesign the past because nobody has appointed a designer to design the future.
And this, rather than its balance sheet, is what interests me.
Off-White may continue selling shoes for some time. It may license products, appoint collaborators, stage events and reissue enough arrows to redirect traffic throughout Western Europe. None of this means the company has ceased functioning. But functioning is a strangely low ambition for a fashion house. I don’t know… a refrigerator functions.
This situation reminds me somewhat of Fenty—not Fenty Beauty nor SavageXFenty, but Rihanna’s short-lived luxury ready-to-wear house alongside LVMH. Fenty launched in 2019 with the kind of advantages most young brands would sell a kidney for: LVMH infrastructure, Rihanna, global publicity, historic significance, and instant name recognition. Less than two years later, LVMH and Rihanna put the operation on hold.
There is something rather dignified about that.
Fashion has an unfortunate habit of keeping ideas alive long after the interesting part has left the room. Fenty, at least, was allowed to expire. Off-White seems to be entering its taxidermy period. Virgil’s symbols are being preserved. His collaborators remain nearby. His “codes” are catalogued and reinterpreted. His sneakers continue selling. His philosophy is—of course—quoted. The body is remarkably well maintained.
I am simply not convinced it is breathing.
Which is why Kamara’s departure feels less like another creative-director vacancy than the delayed answer to a question that the industry has been avoiding since 2021.
What is Off-White without Virgil Abloh?
The flattering answer is a legacy brand. The commercial one is intellectual property. The sentimental one is a platform preserving his ideas. Mine is the residue of an expired cultural movement… the arrows remain after the person who knew where to point them is gone. I never thought Virgil was as great a designer as the praise surrounding him suggested. I found much of his work obvious and vague; when he attempted grandeur, he proved to be capable of producing twenty-person lace nightmares.
But I never doubted that Virgil himself mattered.
He generated argument, aspiration, and demand. He could attach a zip tie to a Nike shoe and make grown adults discuss it as though a white cast of glimmering smoke had manifested inside the Vatican. Off-White still has the clothes. The trademarks. The sneakers. And the people willing to reinterpret all of the above. What it no longer appears to have is the reason everyone was looking.
Fenty found its fate relatively quickly. Off-White may finally be approaching a seat beside it.
Rest in peace, Virgil.
That part, sadly, is real.
Rest in peace, Off-White.
That one has simply taken longer to admit.
WRITTEN BY FREDDY ESPINAL
