Is Off-White™/Virgil Abloh satirical?

Shit brand, the only thing I would consider wearing are the Jordan 1s but they'd be fake because I wouldn't want to support him

There is.

The methodology of the crack game is to take, let's say, a thousand bucks worth of cocaine, and resell it for 3 times as much (or more).

One does this by turning the coke into crack. Not many folks can drop 70-80 bucks on a gram, but crack delivers an amplified hit of dopamine by entering the bloodstream directly through the lungs within seconds of smoking it. 5 minutes later you feel like shit and want more, but that's cool, it's only like 5 bucks a hit, right?

In order to cook crack, you mix the cocaine with water and baking soda inside a glass jar that is heated in a pot of boiling water until it solidifies into a rock of smokeable freebase that is itself worth far more than the value of the cocaine involved in the cooking process.

Problem is, glass jars do not fare well in boiling water. They shatter. Fortunately, there's a special type of glass that will not shatter in the face of high temperatures It was first intended for use in laboratory work and food preparation, and it is known as PYREX glass. Pyrex cook wear is almost all conspicuously labeled like them stupid pants were. Same font, only it's on this special glass.

Soooo, with a relatively small amount of cocaine and some Pyrex, you can triple or even quadruple its collective value on the streets. Which brings us back to Abloh's brand.

PYREX the streetwear brand was all just rebranded low tier athletic wear from Champion. It was all cheap af in its unrefined state, but with the help of a screen printer and some Pyrex, a pair of shorts or a T-shirt valued at probably 20 dollars or less suddenly becomes this... sought-after "thing" that can sell for fucking hundreds, thus recouping your investment many times over and one day retiring in luxury with art hoes to spare.

Pyrex struck me as a meta-commentary on the streetwear/hypebeast mentality and the fashion game in general. You are paying for a name. You will stand in line to pay, and you'll overpay - gladly.

Junkie.

damn.....

Holy shit

Did this fucking moron actually say that ?

What are you doing on this board ?

back2streetwear

thank you

Holy shit how did i miss this

Thank you guys for reading that effing text wall. I knew a lot of low level cats flipping puro cocaine into freebase rock during a formative chapter of my youth, and so the very first time someone showed me the pants and asked me "what the actual fuck", it just made sense instantly.

I feel like it shares something with the supreme logo, which is a dead rip of barbara krueger's famous typographic pop art - sreen prints in the exact same color and font featuring phrases like "I SHOP, THEREFORE I AM". In a sense, these brands are directly mocking their own customer base, the majority of which seems largely oblivious to the fact that they're trapped in a Skinner Box made of apparel that relies on its short lived "must have" status in order to move units.

I mention this because I think 'off white' is more of the same. It's a pun that works on several levels. For example? How does a hustler - namely a drug dealer or a pimp - line his pockets?

He sells coke. He makes his money off White. literally.. Going back to street wear, who are all these largely Minority-Driven apparel brands getting the lion's share of THEIR money from?

Let's be honest - they making money Off White kids. Walk past a Supreme drop if you doubt my assessment of their target markets.

It's brilliant, yet very lowbrow at the same time, and perhaps the best part of the joke is watching what is well and truly an insult slowly morph into a fuccboi status symbol as hype transcends history and reality itself starts to become shaped by hype and marketing.

And the kids line up in droves, to this day.

Your posts usually make me mad, but these are great, keep up the good work!

Thank you, man. I appreciate that.

holy fuck

damn my man you know your shit

This is fantastic, you need to be an opinion columnist for Highsnobiety or something, then they'd actually be worth reading

While this interpretation is tempting it is also invariably wrong (both historically and by authour's definition).

Virgil Abloh has also explained why he titled it Off White, it had more to do of his interests in architecture then some naive commentary on drug consumption culture, which is worth reminding; not at all exclusive to white adolescents.

I don't think Supreme is subversively voicing Kruger to their consumer base by riffing on Kruger's art. I think it's just that Supreme found her graphic style captivating and decided to use it. I think it's simply some sort of serendipity that would Kruger say's through a lot of her art was a response to how a many Supreme consumers can be profiled.

Here's the Virgil Abloh thing, where he talks about the brand and his aspirations:
youtube.com/watch?v=nkMWMBsCd9k

I would argue that a lot of Supreme consumers are Chinese, and not White. But that's simply what I see on the streets.

It's easy (and lame) to dismiss this phenoma as some sort of inexplicable fuccboi thing but I also think there's a fun to be had in investigating why it's been so successful. In that what changed culturally in clothing consumption from IDK, how the value in a finely sculpted shoulder pad went broke while a graphic t-shirt laden in garish design became $$$$. I think observing marketing, as you pointed out- is really a lot of fun.

intentional or not the connections to krueger's art and the whole pyrex thing do create irony at the very least

The Pyrex thing is spot on, the Off White thing is wrong.

I'm not refuting the irony- I just think the proposed trajectory isn't so ingenious, while Supreme is an incredibly company I feel that the Kruger thing was very much a unforeseen bonus. The comic humour persists regardless.

overhyped nigger shit

Why are you even here?

That's racist you racist fuck.

don't do drugs, kids

i think the air jordans are funny. should i cop reps?

"satirical"

very overrated

Need some source on this.

No way Veeky Forums is getting back to being based

Here's the first one I saw after I read your post.
_______________________________________

As a result [of pyrex changing its formula], the drug trade needed to find another way to obtain borosilicate glass. The unintended consequence of World Kitchen’s switch? An uptick in theft from an unlikely place. As PopSci so eloquently notes, “[the crack-making] industry was forced to switch from measuring cups purchased at Walmart to test tubes and beakers stolen from labs.”

nowiknow.com/the-war-against-pyrex/

I can see where you're coming from about Off White, although with Supreme I disagree, on account of the hype/drop/cop business model that i felt was being consistently nurtured and honed by the people running the companies that were relevant at the time of my own rotation into the streetwear world (I was just an illustrator but got to see the industry a bit.).
This was the days of The Hundreds, 10Deep, shit like that. And you know what? Those guys couldn't get the formula 100% - they shoulda watched the skate scene closer, where i can remember kids bugging out over the scarcity of certain t-shirts from companies like Hook ups in 1996.
It wasn't until Supreme came along that hype was really perfected into the exemplar of late stage capitalism it is today. To do so it tapped into Skaters, Graf Artists, Celebs and Scarcity. All at once.

>Chinese Kids
You NYC or LA?

Supreme is a straight Krueger ripoff

Yea if they're under $220.

You're grossly overestimating Supreme's ability to perceive consumer behaviour. Consider that Supreme to begin with were not a huge company but hit the right nodes at the right time and became a epoch making clothing culture phenomena.

They did not knowingly select Kruger's designs because it would return to them as some sort of snide meta-commentary on their consumer base. They simply did not possess that kind of talent. You're forcing your narrative here.

I agree how they're marketing themselves, and continue to do so is a very highly curated process by people who know how to engrain and exploit consumer desire.

Okay nevermind, I read what you wrote and found you're talking about something wholly different which I did not at all touch. I completely agree with what you've said.

I can't really comment on the Skaters, and Graf artists but I vehemently believe that the pressure point is Scarcity. With the consumer demographic most vulnerable being Skater-kids, and by extension their ability to access resources on a dime/hustle hard. Going through old video documentaries of skate culture that shit really felt like a liminal zone.

I'm not USA.

How can anyone here even afford anything by Off-White?

there's this thing called being employed

> They make their money off White
>They make their money off white kids
Holy shit again, what the fuck. I think you read through virgils designs. I never though of it that way

They make their money off of asian kids.

Do you agree with this statement?

>"African people are different to Chinese people in appearance, culture, language, taste, behaviour, disease immunity, height, smells etc, and if you put them in the same room I could tell who is African and who is Chinese"

Congrats, you're now a racist.

am i still racist if i want to FUCK that chink bitch?

no ur just a normal cis male

Asian kids make their money off of reselling to white kids, although a large number of asians are heavily influenced by trending american products and sub cultures.

it's called off white cause his customers are "off-white" ;)

dirty *nglo

go away snek

asian kids(the chinese and koreans who make up off white's main customer base at least) get money from their parents, very few if any are making money reselling to white kids

reselling is not nearly the investment people make it seem and you need to put in way more hours than is feasible(for most people) to even make it worth it, unless of course you're already an established reseller in which none of this applies to you anyways

you are probably some some subhuman mongrel cuck

Trash Americuck brand

stay mad youre fucking poor

also off-white is based in milan, europe

does it really matter where the brand is based? abloh is american and his designs will carry american ethos more than italian.

Off-White is a degenerate interpretation of Neo-Liberal Post Modernism applied to fashion.

How come so many here think fashion just means "Halloween every day"?

I mean, fuck. Have some self respect.

>You could definitely see it in the men’s shows at Paris. Brand collaboration everything. Supreme and Louis Vuitton. Balenciaga making a Kering hoodie.

That’s literally the best garment that’s been made in the modern context. That one hoodie.

>It was trolling hard.

To the max! And I asked Peter Saville about this. I went to him six months ago, as an OG person who I respect, and I asked him, “Is our level of irony, our level of trolling, our level of AKA everything, is it wrong?” And he told me: “This is your era. This is your way to communicate how intellectual you are. It’s not through seriousness. It’s through humor.”

>This is the designer as meme-maker.

And it’s not a coincidence that things have gravitated towards this invented language of humor. But then I often wonder: Is streetwear hollow? For people like myself, and Demna, and Alessandro, I think we’re still digesting the strength of the current language.

Do you know how easy it is to raise your credit limit in North America? Banks and creditors want everyone to carry some debt all the time

So why does my pleb streetwear-liking girl keep mentioning off-white to me? I know it's some popular streetwear thing but I literally know nothing else. I'm knowledgable about fashion but completely ignore the /r/streetwear tier shit.

she probably wants an 'open' relationship

Because Virgil Abloh is a creative genius and one of the biggest innovators in fashion of this decade, possibly century.

>Because Virgil Abloh is a creative "genius" and one of the biggest "innovators" in "fashion" of this decade, possibly century.

Please kys and/or open a fucking book

fuck user dubs of truth you got me, we aren't a thing yet

wondering if I should drop her because of her like of streetwear though

>wondering if I should drop her because of her like of streetwear though
that's not a reason, but if she's making you feel bad it's not worth it man
there are nice girls out there

"WHY" "DOES" "HE" "DO" "THIS" ?

2010-present day

who was more innovative than Virgil?

Yeezy :^)

lady gaga
seriously though, he's piggypacking on everything.
printed sweatshirts are not innovative, the belt isn't either, the shoes are his only respectable items

But we don't have anyone better

thanks user

wait.
wat

>off white thread
>this many replies

wow Veeky Forums has hit a new low

can you actuallly make crack from cocaine?

...

That's THE way to make crack.

You're joking...r-right user?

no he's lying to you

it's literally called crack cocaine

Americucks calling some one poor lmao

>speeds past you in 100k landbarge
"heh, nothin personal kid"

Meh I like the nike collab shoes cause those are at least affordable and look nice

nice b8

Bape does the same thing by indirectly mocking it's consumers who buy the shot regardless just to be able to flex, most of these kids are well off especially in my area where rich international kids rock "high end" brands on the daily.

>"A Bathing Ape in Lukewarm Water". Japanese people typically have daily baths in water at temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 °F). As such, to bathe in lukewarm water is to complacently overindulge. This is an ironic reference to the lazy opulence of the younger generation of Japanese, the brand's own customers.
(sourced from Wikipedia from CNN Talkasia)

Basically Nigo was on the same shit way back then.

Virgil's an architecture graduate, so the same design bullshit approach applies, Im willing to bet that his approach to off white was just:

>what is streetwear
>street = zebra crossings
>wear = hoodies etc

He even slaps on the copious amounts of helvetica that is standard in many architectural courses.