Off-White Spring/Summer 2018 Ready-to-Wear Review
One of the most divine and modern collections from this season belongs to Virgil Abloh and his creative team behind Off-White. Starting off as a streetwear brand, Off-White has quickly gained momentum and begun to directionally define luxury and high fashion this decade. His silhouettes are current, with voluminous jackets, fitted tops, baggy trousers, and tight skirts. Though it would be easy to list off his inspirations like Martin Margiela and Raf Simons, and say that he is just copying their ideals, though that would be mocking and untruthful. What Abloh has done and continues to do with this show is take glamorous, opulent materials and create new shapes with them.
This collection specifically was the perfect offering of every piece of clothing the modern woman could potentially use inside her wardrobe. Street-friendly denim, feminine suiting and business dresses, a bit of clubwear, and flourishes of tulle for insanely fancy gatherings. The show was entitled "Natural Woman" in the same way that many of the brand's motifs are in quotation marks. Semiotic? Perhaps. Extravagant chandeliers surrounded the show space tonight, with every model appearing out of a theatrical red velvet curtain.
Abloh cited Princess Diana as inspiration and the evidence is clear. Princess Diana's ability to be seen as a fashion icon both in and out of formalwear also can be seen within this collection. There's beautiful jewelry and crystallized stilettos that added swank. One marvelous tulle gown was worn under a half-rolled white t shirt, as if the model was halfway dressed. Miniskirt power suits with white sneakers, pearls over denim jackets, and plastic covered stilettos carried by models displayed a woman rushing between two lives, one casual, comfortable, and the other haughty and formal. The bike shorts, which Diana would often wear in the streets and captured by paparazzi, were worn with a fabulously tailored jacket for the finale by none other than Naomi Campbell. Interestingly, several models also carried patches of both Time and People magazine's logo like clutches. This made a point to remind people of Diana's turbulent relationship with the tabloids. These tabloids loved her, and she seemingly loved them, until they destroyed her.
It's good to see a designer intellectually present a strong collection like this in an industry that is becoming more and more cynical with every Instagram "influencer" post. Of course, the street style vultures will be eating up a lot of what this collection has to offer, but it is fantastic to see that Abloh's Off-White brand is becoming more and more sophisticated and changing mainstream opinions about high fashion.
Images Courtesy of VogueRunway.com