Still, Kamara appears to have spotted an anomaly — and is now exploiting it. Off-White was always a bit of an oddity at Paris Fashion Week. Its ultra-American essence was on display when Abloh upended classic cars as sets in a devotion to US car culture, or when he showed in a Paris parking garage in another reminiscence about American car culture. Europeans knew the label was cool, but it was never clear that they could intrinsically relate to the message.
Photo: Armando Grillo / Gorunway.com
Like Abloh and Williams, Kamara is using his world to take Off-White forward, and he says the Milan-based-Paris-showing label is most at home in New York. What other city would welcome a label that is based in Milan, shows in Paris, built by a Chicago native and led by a London resident?
“We’ve never shown here,” Kamara notes, “I think it’s good for the brand to come home.”
“V really wanted to show here for a very long time,” he says, referring to Abloh by his first initial. “Now that I’m looking at the brand, I feel it’s also my responsibility to honour that vision and bring it to New York and hopefully keep showing it here.”
“It’s me blending my African roots with a very American brand,” Kamara says. “I’m finding myself within Virgil’s incredible universe and exploiting my point of view was well.”
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