Off-White FW20 Menswear

For his Fall/Winter 2020 menswear collection, titled “Tornado Warning,” Virgil Abloh significantly deepens— and anchors—Off-White’s established identity.

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Abloh’s sensibilities continue to pull away from the term “streetwear,” but he is not discarding his hand of in-the-know familiarity. In this lineup, the designer pushes the idea wheel forward, layering in singular silhouettes, innovative suiting, and dressier formal and outerwear.

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Off-White FW20 Womenswear

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For his FW 2020 womenswear collection, Virgil Abloh further develops Off-White’s codes with a sense of contemporary realism, beyond the hems of the fashion industry. He looks at the world at large.

To set the pace, Abloh ventured back to the nineties—a definitive sartorial era—by compiling references from then-ubiquitous minimal slip-dresses and bra tops to Hype Williams’s 1998 directorial film debut, Belly. Williams is widely known for his innovative and Zeitgeist-capturing music videos, which blend technology, fashion, and uncompromising individuality; in Belly, keystone late nineties-era hallmarks like red leather Ecko puffers and original-design all-white Range Rovers take centerstage. The view towards a more recent nostalgia hints at a collective comfort regarding what has passed—especially when the future feels so unpredictable.

From there, Abloh used the nineties as a springboard for helping to define what OffWhite will be in the 2020’s. His approach is one of calculated miscellany, mirroring the moment and pushing that moment forward.

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Bookending his Fall runway were hybridized, high-volume dresses with Arc’teryx parkas. Myriad trenches came paired with trousers, which were generally long and lean, with breaks at the ankle. Holstein blot motifs walked alongside circular cutout separates; heavy chain elements were worked in as jewelry or dress adornments. Extra-tailored leather blazers featured spray-painted overlays. Houndstooth patterns morphed into psychedelic pools on top-coats and skirts. An angular tulle wing-and-half-dress was worn over camouflage cargo pants. A collaboration with MGM studios led to a Blue Velvet-inspired capsule: a structured, off-the-shoulder dress in the fabric the movie is named for, along with mirror-ball metallic garments that channel Dorothy Vallens’s glitzier ensembles.

Akin to what’s happening in culture greater, we are now living in an era of openness, constant newness, hyper-information, and the pressing need for adaptability: “Reality,” says Abloh, “is the starting point of my type of storytelling.”

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Off-White Spring 2020 Menswear

The opening look and most of the closing, women’s included, at this Off-White show were made in collaboration with the New York artist Futura—aka Lenny McGurr. His vivid spray strokes and sleekly alien Pointman figure were incorporated as print or jacquard into suiting, soft trenches, cycling vests, denim, a blanket, and evening dresses. As Virgil Abloh sketched it in his long sentences backstage: “In his lifetime, and in the culture that we come from, which is a segment of hip-hop and graffiti, [his work] started out being seen as a form of vandalism, not art. . . . But as well as painting on the side of subway trains, he was part of the scene and showed with Basquiat and Keith Haring. . . . . He was on what was once thought of as the fringe. . . . but now, through time, we can see that the beauty of Basquiat is also the beauty of Lenny, Futura.”

That transition from the counterculture—the fringe—to become both the subject of establishment acclaim and an agent of change within the establishment mirrors Abloh’s own path: In the 10 years since he was photographed by Tommy Ton with Kanye West and crew outside Comme des Garçons, Abloh has completed the full loop. But reflecting on the longer span of Futura’s journey—combined with his own recent project curating his past body of work for the “Figures of Speech” exhibition in Chicago—has made Abloh consider a bigger picture. “When I make things, I look at it on a scale of 30 years. What gives the esteem and the energy . . . I know the work has to mean something now, but I’m also thinking about what it means when you zoom out.”

There was certainly a sense of space in time in some of this collection. Its span of reference was broad but as legibly interconnected as the branding on the new Nike Dunk, codesigned with Futura, that made its debut on Abloh’s carnation-field runway. The chain-link fence pattern on bags, jackets, and a semitransparent poncho played nicely against the densely hand-knit sweaters that bore patches declaring membership in the “Off-White climbing club.”

Climbing was not only this collection’s second big theme—reflected in the drawstrings worked into suiting, the technical luggage, and the nylon patched knit faux fleeces—but it was also part of the broader metaphor at play. A sky blue suede trench with detachable front pockets, a double-layered floral-print down jacket and shorts, a chain-link knit off-white shirt and shorts, plus the recut denim template workwear in washed and treated technical fabrics were all highly polished and finished pieces. Conversely, the tie-dyed cargo pants (sometimes crystal set) and denim, the bandana-patched T-shirts, those dense knit sweaters, and bleached flannel shirting were all designed to appear roughened and weathered.

In a piece of tape played before the show, Bjork spoke about the “spaced-outness” of perspective, nurtured through the landscape of Iceland, that helped her learn songwriting. Abloh seems to be in search of a similar panoramic point of view—an apex position—and the topography of the clothes he is producing as he makes that ascent is benefiting from it.

Source: VOGUE

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