Virgil Abloh found himself at the center of a social media backlash late last week when pictures of Off-White™’s team dinner surfaced online, revealing Off-White™’s staff in attendance to be almost entirely white. While the criticism was initially dismissed by Abloh’s PR rep, the designer later released a statement when the story grew online outside of the usual fashion insider circles.
In an unusual move for Abloh, who typically ignores callouts of his brand, he took to Instagram stories to showcase the black people he works alongside, including Tremaine Emory and Acyde of No Vacancy Inn, and even Serena Williams. Abloh later released a statement, saying “My design team is diverse as the world is big.” The milquetoast response left a lot to be desired; it didn’t take long for people to point out that working with one of the world’s most famous athletes isn’t quite the same as hiring black people on his staff.
It’s also worth pointing out that most of the “outrage” was actually disappointment. It’s become easy to flatten anything that happens inside the walls of social media as a baying mob, desperate for blood. But most of what we saw was black people expressing sadness about a luxury black-led fashion brand actually appearing to just follow the industry’s status quo.
Leave A Comment