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Off-white: a new era of luxury

Brands like Fenty, I.AM.GIA or Reformation have made a name for themselves by revolutionising the luxury sector. They have developed a strong presence through celebrities, but also on Instagram with millions of followers.They are not luxury brands but compete by targeting the same customers and offering similar prices.


In a recent article, young people from Generation Z were asked which luxury brands they admire, and Rihanna's Fenty or Pharrell Williams' Billionaire Boys Club, in the same category as Off-White, came out on top. Thus the notion of luxury is evolving and becoming ambiguous. 

Off-White is an Italian clothing and accessories brand founded by American businessman Virgil Abloh. The brand is part of the high-end streetwear wave. Indeed, the brand's name relies heavily on shades of colour and Virgil Abloh wanted to target all kinds of customers without making a difference in terms of religion, origin or body type among his customers. Let's take a moment to introduce Virgil Abloh. An American designer with multiple interests, he is a designer, a DJ but also for a long time Kanye West's right-hand man. Off-white was launched in 2013 in Milan with the aim of bringing streetwear and elegance together in one item. 


The successes and failures of OFF-White

One of Off-White's biggest successes is the combination of streetwear and high-end products. Indeed, streetwear is literally the clothing of the street, that is to say very far from the elegance and the uniqueness of high-end products. Moreover, through its logo, it was able to get into the heads of consumers by using pedestrian crossings and road signs as a logo or design for its articles. This choice of logo was intended to allow its target customers to see Off-white everywhere even in their everyday lives. This powerful strategy was also beneficial to the designer as it makes the brand look bigger than it actually is. 


« The most important message is to let me just focus on making the most beautiful normcore clothes, but as luxurious as possible » - Virgil Abloh


As soon as the brand was created, a famous Instagram page Diet Prada which is a fashion watchdog group accused Virgil Abloh of plagiarism. Indeed, the designer would have copied the old Glasgow airport logo. Could this be a coincidence or a lack of originality on the part of the designer? Another obstacle on the brand's path to success is counterfeiting. Indeed, due to its lack of uniqueness and especially the lack of work on materials, Off-White remains a very easily imitable brand, as we can see with the famous marketplace Wish.com, in which we find Off-White articles but of counterfeit. This platform would have generated more than 2 million dollars of sales of these products. Unfortunately, this harms Virgil Abloh's brand image and thus the brand will have difficulty attracting new customers and is slowly moving away from the elegance and uniqueness of luxury brands.  


The rise to luxury ?


Off-White wants to be perceived as a luxury brand, combining sobriety and uniqueness, by proposing expensive and sometimes inaccessible items for certain social classes. However, as soon as we think of luxury brands, more commonly called houses such as Dior or Balenciaga, we think directly of a history, a heritage. Indeed, Internet users want authenticity, they want to have a strong and important emotional impact, quality in creation, know-how, beauty, a good customer experience, to show the unattainable even if luxury makes people dream differently today, the dream happens in the consumer's head, to succeed in making them travel, everyone has a different relationship with the brand and so Virgil Abloh must succeed in satisfying all types of customers. Moreover, Off-White's main customers come from the Z generation or the Millenials, that's why the brand decided to bet on online marketing using social networks. However, "all social media" is not enough to build a luxury brand. To attract new consumers, brands need to differentiate themselves through technology, personalisation, creativity and a return to craftsmanship. This takes time. Off-White is getting a foothold in luxury fashion by being bought by the French group LVMH. Finally, as the men's artistic director for Louis Vuitton, Virgil Abloh gives his brand image a luxurious look and allows his clientele to experience an inaccessible domain.

References

Balenciaga : l’histoire mode de la marque, ses derniers défilés - Elle. (2019). Balenciaga : l’histoire mode de la marque, ses défilés. https://www.elle.fr/Mode/Les-defiles-de-mode/Balenciaga

 

FashionNetwork.com FR. (2018). Off-White réclame des millions de dollars a Wish.com pour recel de contrefaçon. FashionNetwork.com. https://fr.fashionnetwork.com/news/off-white-reclame-des-millions-de-dollars-a-wish-com-pour-recel-de-contrefacon,965414.html

 

FashionNetwork.com FR. (2021). LVMH s’offre Off-White, la marque de streetwear de Virgil Abloh. FashionNetwork.com. https://fr.fashionnetwork.com/news/Lvmh-s-offre-off-white-la-marque-de-streetwear-de-virgil-abloh,1321262.html

 

OFF-WHITE. (2019). OneSiam.com. https://www.onesiam.com/en/fashion/off-white-high-end-streetwear

 

Off-White, Gucci & Balenciaga Reigned Supreme At Close of 2019. (2019). Off-White, Gucci & Balenciaga Reigned Supreme At Close of 2019. https://www.luxurysociety.com/en/articles/2020/02/white-gucci-and-balenciaga-reigned-supreme-close-2019

 

S. (2021, 1 juillet). L’histoire derrière la marque. . . StockX News. https://stockx.com/news/fr-fr/lhistoire-derriere-la-marque-off-white-fr/

 

Salessy, H. (2018, 26 mars). Le phénomène Virgil Abloh, ou comment le créateur d’Off-White et directeur artistique des lignes hommes Louis Vuitton a conquis la mode. Vogue Paris. https://www.vogue.fr/mode/en-vogue/story/phenomene-virgil-abloh-styliste-kanye-west-comment-createur-off-white-a-conquis-la-mode/1050

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