March 7, 2025 |
Under Ib Kamara’s creative direction, Off-White remains a brand in motion – always leaning forward and always recalibrating its relationship with the future. For AW25, that future arrived in the form of State of Resistance, a collection that turned a dimly lit dome into an arena of mechanised precision that felt equal parts motorsport and modern uniform.
Opening to the sounds of beating drums that then softened, out stepped a series of neoprene and nylon ensembles. Bomber jackets were spliced together with black tailoring, while shoulders – clean-cut yet deliberately exaggerated – brought in an almost extraterrestrial intensity. The Off-White protagonist felt pulled from a dystopian blockbuster, somewhere between rebel and enforcer.
But the rigidity didn’t last. Structure loosened its grip, and resistance gave way to release; though, never entirely. Asymmetric-hemmed dresses and sleek co-ords stuck to their sci-fi inspirations but took shape in sheer and fluid fabrics printed with Ghanaian stars and eagles. Elsewhere, belt bags surfaced, streamlined into smaller hyper-functional compartments that seemed less accessory, more survival tool, and tweed and plastic appeared as articles of protection, while sport shorts and anatomic trousers blended function with form.
Face-framing hoods, tucked beneath matching berets and baseball cap-hood hybrids, introduced a curated futurism that blended the offbeat with the ordinary. Women’s looks had a robotic, almost exoskeletal presentation, with shoulder and bust body-contouring seams and technical trimmings rendered in the same vein as Hajime Sorayama’s mechanoid women. Closing the show, Burna Boy made a stellar entrance clad in all-black leather.
In Kamara’s Off-White, resistance isn’t about standing still, it’s about moving forward.
Photography courtesy of Off-White.
