Off-White Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear
Off-White Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear
By Brooklyn Hoffmann — September 16, 2024
The collection symbolized the imaginative hope that America encapsulates. The collection was equal parts edgy, sporty, and sexy, showcasing Ib Kamara’s artistic touch while staying loyal to Off-White’s roots.
Article cover image by Isidore Montag for Gorunway.com.
Off-White is among the late visionary Virgil Abloh’s long list of creative endeavors. An experimental and collaborative brand somewhere in between an art project and streetwear, created in 2013 as a product of the standstill that the fashion industry seemed to be at.
“Streetwear wasn’t on anyone’s radar, but the sort of chatter at dinners after shows was like ‘Fashion needs something new. It’s stagnant. What’s the new thing going to be?’ That was the timeline on which I was crafting my ideas,” Mr. Abloh told GQ.
As former creative director of Donda and artistic director of Louis Vuitton, Abloh brought his runway shows to Paris, applied for the LVMH prize for young designers (he was a finalist in 2015), and embraced both women’s and men’s wear. Though Off-White was met with criticism and mixed opinions at first, it ended up gaining attention by collaborating with brands such as Nike, Levi’s, Chrome Hearts, and Jimmy Choo, as well as with musicians and designers like A$AP Rocky and Kanye West.
Off-White is an international brand headquartered in Milan, and in its nine years of operation, it has never had a show in the United States. Ib Kamara, who became creative director after Abloh’s passing in 2021, explained that bringing Off-White to New York has been in the works for a while but was postponed due to Abloh’s death.
On a call with Vogue, Kamara said, “Now the time feels right to show up. It feels natural to grow and show where so much of the community around the brand is. I think it will be amazing and feel great for Off-White to show for the first time in the city. It’s common ground—a melting pot where everybody is equal.”
Kamara hinted that the collection would further last season’s conversation between West African artisanship and North American sportswear, and will also mark the beginning of a series of New York-centric Off-White creations.
September 8, Kamara and his team took over Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 2 to debut the “Duty-Free” collection, which he explained, “...was triggered by a trip to Ghana, the place where Virgil [Abloh] came from and the roots he cherished and constantly referred to in his work.” Kamara continued, saying, “I was born in Sierra Leone, and eventually grew up in London, but our experiences were similar. I have vivid memories of what America, and New York in particular, represented in the collective imagination of Africans: a dreamland of utopias made real, a place of opportunities.”
The collection symbolized the imaginative hope that America encapsulates. The collection was equal parts edgy, sporty, and sexy, showcasing Ib Kamara’s artistic touch while staying loyal to Off-White’s roots.
The patterns were bold, the zippers were plentiful, and gleaming adornments reflected New York’s sunny skyline. Otherworldly handbags were paired with plunging necklines and low-slung skirts with embellished bands. The show also brought along many familiar faces. Musician NLE Choppa and Solange Knowles’ son Julez Smith made their runway debut while Victoria Monet, Paris Jackson, Zayn Malik, and Anna Wintour watched.
Just as Kamara described New York, Off-White’s spring/summer 2025 show was a melting pot of its own. Not only did the collection merge American and African cultures, but it was also a clear product of Ib Kamara and the late Abloh’s creative genius. It brought together all kinds of artists and further proved what we already knew about Off-White: it will not be put in a box.
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