Virgil Abloh. Nike. ICONS

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He’s a complicated hero to have: Last summer, he worked with the extremely famous socially conscious conceptual artist Jenny Holzer to create a line of pro-immigration and anti-neo-nationalism statement pieces, and that winter, he designed T-shirts for Planned Parenthood.

Not that this means Abloh’s abandonment of where he came from as a designer—or of who he’s bringing with him. His dedication to the aesthetics of architecture and product design were simultaneously manifested in a color palette inspired by Dieter Rams’s Braun products—and in the tools cleverly embedded in accessories: aluminum keys for heels, a single nail stabbed through a puffy leather bag.The show ended with models and Abloh applauding and dancing with MIA and her incredible troupe of women dancers—the feeling of uplift and community spirit palpably radiating from the stage. Everything in quotes,” as in, “everything is ironic and also the main recognizable design element on the clothes is chunky quotation marks” Last October, Federica Levato, a partner at the marketing consultancy Bain & Company, told Business of Fashion, “Customers are becoming younger, and that is very good for the mid- and longer-term survival of this industry.” She continued: “There is a big market of €2.5 million for luxury T-shirts, for example, that is growing very fast. And a half-a-billion-euro market for rubber sliders, which is very unusual in this market.”

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Off-White is the hottest brand in the world, according to the quarterly ranking released by the fashion and e-commerce platform Lyst. When it comes down to it, Virgil Abloh’s Off-White show was all elevation, exhilaration, and education. Orchestrated by fashion’s master of simultaneous, multi-channelling action, there was much going on in all directions—not for nothing did he name it “Laboratory of Fun.” Let’s start with the exhilaration, though: As the effective opener to the first IRL Paris haute couture season since the pandemic hit, it was joyful reunion, a fantastic repurposing of the ritual of the catwalk as a measure of change, and a brilliant performance by MIA, all rolled into one. Because it’s so simple and approachable, a lot of streetwear kids may think it’s deeper than it really is”

For a collaboration with Hiroshi Fujiwara, Abloh designed a money clip that looks like a credit card. “Don’t let Zara and Uniqlo educate you on the price of a garment because that’s not fashion,” he once said. “That’s like McDonald’s. Your health is tied to that — a 99-cent nugget.” He has also collaborated with McDonald’s. Virgil and Rihanna in Paris. Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images Off-White benefits from high fashion’s desperation to regain youth appeal In its archiving of the Off-White x Nike collections, ICONS ultimately encapsulates the wider impact of Abloh’s work within fashion, his way of taking classic forms, deconstructing them, and turning them on their heads. There is one image in the book which symbolises this and which Kyes says crystallised the entire project for him. It’s a prototype of a Jordan 1, a shoe that sits at the very pinnacle of Nike’s signature designs, that has been deconstructed by Abloh with an X-Acto knife. “When we found that prototype I instantly got it,” says Kyes. “You could see it was a breakthrough.” There is just nobody who understands our modern word salad better. Off-White and Virgil Abloh are both extremely controversial, which is its own free advertisingAway from fashion week, and Abloh’s work with Nike also contributed to the transformation of the sneaker landscape. Originally teaming up with the sportswear giant in 2017 for a remixed, red-plastic-tagged reimagining of Nike’s most recognisable styles, “The Ten” collection became one of the biggest collaborative collections in sneaker history. Made up of reworked Air Jordans, VaporMaxes, and Blazers, the capsule was certainly one of the most hyped, and helped cement the sneaker as a legitimate resident of the realms of high fashion and art.