Virgil Abloh was adjusting a zip on a denim jacket backstage at the Palais de Tokyo when Naomi Campbell walked in

Virgil Abloh was adjusting a zip on a denim jacket backstage at the Palais de Tokyo when Naomi Campbell walked in. The jacket was covered in quotation marks and belonged to no one yet. Campbell picked it up, turned it over, and asked if she could wear it out that night. This was 2017. Off-White had been showing in Paris for three seasons, but it was the women who wore it—who claimed it before the campaign dropped, before the editorials ran—who made the house legible to anyone outside the Kanye orbit.

Three of them, in particular, gave Off-White its shape. Not muses in the old sense—no one was draped on a chaise waiting for inspiration—but collaborators who understood that Abloh's project was as much about access and remix as it was about garments. They wore the work in public, bent it to their own purposes, and in doing so made it mean something beyond the runway.

Naomi Campbell: The Validator

Campbell had been in fashion for thirty years when she first wore Off-White. She had opened for Yves Saint Laurent, closed for Versace, and walked out of shows when the casting was too white. By the time Abloh launched the women's line in 2014, she was no longer the ingénue. She was the institution.

What she gave Off-White was legitimacy. When Campbell wore the house to a Vogue dinner in 2016—a black bomber jacket over a slip dress, the signature diagonal stripes running across the back—it signalled that this was not streetwear trying to pass as fashion. It was fashion that had come from streetwear, and the difference mattered.

Abloh understood this. He cast Campbell in his Spring 2018 show, where she walked in a deconstructed trench with the belt trailing behind her like a thought she hadn't finished. The collection was called "Business Casual," a phrase that only makes sense if you have spent time in an office or around people who have. Campbell, who had spent her career moving between the commercial and the avant-garde, knew how to sell both.

She also knew how to make a point. In 2018, she appeared in the Off-White campaign wearing a white shirt with the word "WOMAN" printed across the chest in Helvetica. It was blunt, almost too obvious, but that was the register Abloh worked in. He was not interested in subtlety. He was interested in making sure you got it.

What Campbell brought to Off-White was not youth or novelty but authority. She had been there when Gianni Versace was draping her in gold mesh, when Azzedine Alaïa was cutting dresses to her exact measurements. She did not need Off-White. Off-White needed her.

Bella Hadid: The Amplifier

Bella Hadid wore Off-White the way some people wear a uniform. Between 2016 and 2019, she appeared in the house at least once a month—at airports, at dinners, at after-parties where the lighting was bad and the photos were worse. She wore the jeans with the zip that ran from waist to ankle. She wore the hoodies with "FOR ALL" printed across the back. She wore the bags that looked like they had been shipped in from a warehouse and never unwrapped.

Hadid was not the first model to build a career on Instagram, but she was among the first to understand that editorial and social media were not separate channels. They were the same channel, and you could control both if you moved quickly enough. Off-White was built for this. The clothes photographed well in motion. The logos were legible at low resolution. The whole project assumed you were looking at a screen.

Abloh cast Hadid repeatedly—Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018—and each time she appeared, the house's reach expanded. She was not selling a lifestyle. She was selling a look that could be assembled from pieces you might actually find in a shop, provided you were willing to pay €600 for a T-shirt.

What Hadid gave Off-White was scale. Campbell had provided credibility. Hadid provided ubiquity. By 2018, the house was everywhere—not because it had opened more stores, but because Hadid had worn it in enough places that it no longer felt like a niche concern. It felt like the default.

There was a risk in this. When a brand becomes too accessible, it stops being desirable. But Off-White managed to stay just out of reach, even as it appeared on every feed. Part of this was Abloh's skill at controlling the narrative. Part of it was Hadid's ability to make the clothes look like they belonged to her, not to the house.

Serena Williams: The Expander

Serena Williams wore Off-White to the 2018 French Open, and it was not a collaboration in the traditional sense. Nike had commissioned Abloh to design her kit, and what he delivered was a black catsuit with "MOTHER" and "CHAMPION" printed down the legs in sans-serif capitals. The French Tennis Federation banned it the following year, citing dress code violations. Williams switched to a tutu.

The catsuit was not subtle, but it was effective. It made the case that Off-White could work outside the fashion system—that it could operate in sport, in performance, in contexts where the clothes had to do more than photograph well. Williams, who had spent her career fighting dress codes and commentators who could not imagine a Black woman dominating tennis, understood what Abloh was trying to do. He was making space.

What Williams gave Off-White was proof that the house could expand beyond its original audience. Abloh had built the brand on a foundation of hip-hop, skateboarding, and art-school references. Williams brought it into sport, into motherhood, into a conversation about who gets to wear what and why.

She also brought it into the mainstream in a way that neither Campbell nor Hadid could. Campbell was fashion. Hadid was fashion-adjacent. Williams was global in a way that transcended industry. When she wore Off-White, people who had never heard of Virgil Abloh saw it.

What Remains

Abloh died in November 2021, and Off-White has continued under the direction of Ib Kamara. The house still shows in Paris. The collections still feature quotation marks and zip ties and text printed in Helvetica. But the women who made it legible in the first place have moved on.

Campbell is still working, still making a point. Hadid is still wearing the house, though less frequently. Williams retired from tennis in 2022 and now runs a venture capital firm. None of them needed Off-White to have a career. But Off-White needed them to have a meaning.