Moving Still

Say what you want.  Like it or hate it.  Call it hyped up bullshit.  But if you’re ignoring what a collective wave of designers like Shayne Oliver at Hood by Air, Marcelo Burlon’s County of Milan and now Virgil Abloh’s Off-White is, as a cultural comment on the state of fashion today, then you’re sort of missing the point.  Business of Fashion recently called these trio of designers “Streetwear’s New Guard” much to the predictable umbrage of “for real” streetcar aficionados, who felt that these brands hadn’t been around long enough to earn the label of the much-vaulted name of streetwear.  Rather than referring to it as a new guard, it might be better to give this off-shoot a new term of categorisation.  People wagging their fingers at these designers who apparently don’t yet have the “gravitas” of heavyweights like Supreme of Stussy, perhaps don’t remember that those brands also had their own beginnings.

We should look at these brands and think about what they’re contributing to the present rather than their value in the future.  And at present, the bottom line is, people are drawn to them in a big way – in numbers, in levels of interaction and in a showing of appreciation and loyalty when supposedly we’re in a fashion landscape where people are fickle about their choices, mixing and matching and well… being a bit blasé about everything.  I think of the way a whole posse of people turn up wearing Hood by Air t-shirts and sweatshirts at their shows, united as thought they were diehard followers of a football team.  As a physical entity they looked like a proper style tribe – as solid as the groups of visual-kei fans in Tokyo.  I look at Abloh’s instagram and you have people pleading with him to make bigger sizes because..”I was barely able to get Pyrex and this vision is so much more focused. So defined. BREAKING THROUGH SHIT. Don’t deny me a consumer the opportunity to be apart of the movement because I don’t wear a small or medium.“  Movement.  Break-through.  Those are big words to be throwing around in the age of a the fair-weather fashion consumer.

At Copenhagen International Fashion Fair, otherwise known as CIFF, there’s an intriguing pairing of exhibitions on until tomorrow (if you’re in town please try and make it over to see this!).  On one side of Crystal Hall (open to the public) at the Bella Center, Malcolm McLaren looms large in an incredibly detailed and well-put together overview about specifically his fusion of music and fashion – Let it Rock: The Look of Music, The Sound of Fashion is the exhibition title name, coined by curators Paul Gorman, the expert of all things Brit-sub-culture and McLaren’s partner Young Kim.  This deserves a separate and detailed post.

Off-White S/S 15 menswear collection

Then on the other side in a darkened corner, Abloh’s wave is presented as a physical video projection with loud crashing audio and a handy metaphor for what Abloh’s label Off White is about.  It’s an installation that goes hand in hand with Abloh’s S/S 15 collection entitled “Moving Still” made up of blacked-out graphics, sewn on badges used like clusters of icons on a desktop and a Baja-inspired floral print.  Here in this industrial space, you do feel a wave crashing over you but it’s not salty or wet.  It’s the feeling of the unknown.

When I spoke to Abloh, he used Tumblr as a reference over and over again – it almost became like an adjective to define a generation of people he feels are likely to understand what he is doing with Off-White.  “If you squint your eyes at it, it might just look like streetwear,” said Abloh. “Clothes with graphics on it.  But if you can see the layers underneath, there is a high level of design.  I’m making current culture clothes for Tumblr kids that can mix high and low.  I’m from that generation.  They know about Raf and Balmain but they also know about the kid down the road printing their own t-shirts.  It’s Supreme and Celine.  That juxtaposition is what Off-White is based upon – it’s being a young designer who is in tune with reality as well as being able to extract reality and create an artistic statement.”

Juxtaposition is another word Abloh uses a lot.  The installation is about that “crash” or “clash”, if you will.  “High, low.  Cheap, chic,” said Abloh. ” I love it when those things crash.  Even the name Off-White is a juxtaposition.  Or like here.  I’m honoured to even be here paired next to Malcolm McLaren – it’s a trip!”

When Abloh speaks, it can often sound lofty and imbued with a slight hint of arrogance even.  But it’s the heightened ambition that is intriguing about this self-confessed fashion consumer turned creative.  Abloh came from a background of having trained as an architect and then of course became Kanye West’s creative/art director but his own path into fashion is a familiar one that most of us can relate to.  It was seeing a Kris van Assche collection in 2003 that sent Abloh spiralling down the rabbit hole of Style.com and then on to collecting Raf Simons.  From observer to hardcore consumer and collector to creator.  You could say that path has been well-trodden by many a person in the industry and certainly by the “interlopers” of this industry (ahem ahem) that have stirred up so much debate in recent years.

“This is a crazy time in fashion.  Editors have to compete with popular opinion.  Before, it was like you’re either on the page or not.  Now you have a genre like streetwear, which literally means “from the people” colliding with fashion.”  When asked whether he thought the current vogue for streetwear within high fashion was a passing thing, Abloh was lucid.  “It’s only going to be relevant for so long – but is it going to be remembered or forgotten about?  Is it credible or is it like Canal Street?”

It becomes tricky when you try and define what Abloh and the likes of Oliver and Burlon are doing but Abloh is adamant that he wants to do is to push a multi-layered and faceted notion of streetwear.  Which to hardcore streetwear enthusiasts might seem ludicrous because to them, it is already at the highest level it can be.  But from a fashion aesthetic perspective, stripping back the attachment of an attitude or lifestyle, streetwear is often reduced to a visual 2D flat planed graphic t-shirt.    “Within fashion, the idea of streetwear is still up for debate of whether it’s credible because it’s generally one-note,” said Abloh.  “I want to still be within streetwear but not be one-note, to have layers of reason and concept.  I want it upgraded on every level from concept to make.  As a designer, you don’t pore over just the ‘look of it’ but the fit and the quality.”

When I poked around Selfridges earlier this year, I touched up Off-White’s inaugural collection and was definitely taken aback by the “upgrade” in quality and also in stylistic detailing in comparison to say Abloh’s previous Pyrex line (which was basically a line of printed t-shirts and tops).  The debut womenswear for AW14 is similarly souped-up.  Entitled “I only smoke when I drink” (how many times have we heard that old chestnut before…?) is again full of contrasts and yes, juxtapositions.  “Chic, plus Air Force 1’s” is how Abloh summed it up to Style.com.  That in itself is a summary of how many women I know dress because they don’t want to be boxed into a cliche or a style trope.  Similarly, Abloh is not keen on just trussing up women in Off-White’s menswear that has been sized down.  “It isn’t a girl dressing as a guy,” said Abloh.  “It’s steeped in the same water but not the same thing.”  Ultimately it’s pieces you’d want to take out Off-White’s equation and into your own.  Like so much of fashion today.  Cut and paste.  Mix and match.  It might feel like it’s all surface for some but at the very least, it’s a jagged and unpredictable surface.  And it’s changing all the time.  That’s the now.

Off-White A/W 14-5 womenswear