Ibrahim Kamara has started to reveal more of himself since taking on the role of Art and Image Director at Off-White. Last August, he revisited the country of his birth, Sierra Leone, which he left as an infant because of the civil war. “A lot of the research I did back home on colours, textures and fabrics really informed the experiments we did in the studio,” he says. One of the fabric’s most recognizable signs is the Country Cloth-inspired blue rectangle print—the “celebration pattern”—used on the opening men’s parka and this Pre-Fall collection’s women’s parka.
It’s a collection that celebrates one fundamental dimension while celebrating another: the principles of its founding designer, Virgil Abloh. Cutout tailoring, inverted comma slogans—”No Offense” this time—and zip ties were all part of Kamara’s collage. He said his starting point concept was “delivery,” the seemingly magical logistical glue that connects us, adding that his turning point was taking the concept to the moon. It’s a subtle and ingenious contraption that can be used to play around with those West African codes. As for “No Offense,” he said, “It’s something we came up with in the studio because we were trying to build hybrids out of traditional stuff.”
and creating a The body is clearly his own work, Abloh has shaped a work practice – centered on, but not excluded from, Afro-centric, co-uplifting, essentially Be gracious—it’s the practice that allows Kamara and all of his Off-White colleagues to seamlessly build on the foundation the founders started. Here, Kamara works to round out and soften the hard shoulder lines of men’s coats and tailoring, while applying strength and security in the ‘delivered’-derived strap detailing of womenswear. The pair visibly came together in pleated skirts of various frills and mixed and matched like varsity miniskirts. The hardware and print combined tire tread markings and shipping, and they crashed into meteor impact craters in the lunar landscape, giving Kamala the distance to work calmly. Kamara said his personal mantra for the series is On The Go: Off-White keep going.
