The yellow cable-ties are gone from the runway

The yellow cable-ties are gone from the runway. Not entirely — they still appear, sporadically, on a sleeve or a handbag strap — but they no longer punctuate every look like a signature at the bottom of a contract. The quotation marks, too, have receded. They were everywhere for a time: "SCULPTURE," "WOMAN," "TEMPLATE." Now they show up once or twice a collection, if at all. What remains is the diagonal stripe, the arrow motif, and a question that refuses to settle: what, exactly, is Off-White now that Virgil Abloh is no longer here to answer it?

The house opened in 2013 as something between a streetwear label and a conceptual art project. Abloh, trained as an architect and civil engineer, had spent years in Kanye West's orbit — art directing, designing, learning how to move between industries without asking permission. Off-White was the first thing that was entirely his. The name itself was a thesis: not black, not white, but the space in between. High fashion and street culture. Luxury and irony. Garments that looked like prototypes, annotated with instructions for how to read them.

It worked because Abloh understood that fashion, at a certain level, is a language game. He put "SHOELACES" on shoelaces. He printed "LOGO" where a logo would normally sit. It was cheeky, but it was also structurally sound — a way of making the invisible codes of fashion visible, then selling them back to an audience fluent in both streetwear and art theory. The clothes were expensive, but they looked unfinished. The branding was everywhere, but it mocked the very idea of branding. It was irony that you could wear to a gallery opening or a sneaker drop, and it made sense in both contexts.

By 2017, Off-White was the hottest brand in menswear according to Lyst's quarterly index. The yellow industrial belt — a piece of nylon webbing with "INDUSTRIAL BELT" printed along its length — became as recognisable as a Gucci loafer. Collaborations followed: Nike, IKEA, Rimowa, Byredo. Abloh's method was to take an existing object, annotate it, and release it in limited quantities. A transparent IKEA bag became a collectible. A pair of Air Jordan 1s, deconstructed and labelled, resold for thousands. The house wasn't just selling clothes; it was selling a way of seeing.

Then, in 2018, Abloh was named artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear. It was a watershed moment — the first Black American to lead a French luxury maison. Off-White, suddenly, was no longer the main act. It was the thing Abloh had built on his way to somewhere else.

After Virgil

Abloh died in November 2021, at 41, after a private two-year battle with cardiac angiosarcoma. The news arrived without warning. He had been working until weeks before his death — designing collections, staging shows, posting on Instagram. His final Off-White collection, spring/summer 2022, was shown posthumously in Paris. It opened with a plain white shirt and closed with a wedding dress. The cable-ties were there, but sparingly. The quotation marks were gone.

The question of what happens next fell to Ib Kamara, the Sierra Leonean-British stylist and editor who had worked closely with Abloh in his final years. Kamara was named art and image director of Off-White in June 2022. Not creative director — the distinction mattered. Kamara's role, as he described it in early interviews, was not to replace Abloh but to continue a conversation. He would oversee image, casting, set design, and the visual language of the brand. The actual garments would be designed by the in-house team, many of whom had worked with Abloh since the beginning.

The first collection under Kamara's direction, spring/summer 2023, was shown in September 2022. It was called "Blossom," and it looked nothing like the Off-White of 2017. The palette was soft — lilac, cream, powder blue. The silhouettes were fluid. There were no visible logos, no ironic text, no industrial hardware. Instead, there were hand-painted florals, deconstructed shirting, and a quietness that felt almost elegiac. It was beautiful. It was also divisive.

Critics praised the sensitivity of the work. Kamara, they noted, was not trying to mimic Abloh's voice. He was offering something gentler, more introspective. But the house's core audience — the one that had bought the yellow belts and the quotation-mark hoodies — was less certain. Off-White had always been loud. This was a whisper.

The commercial reality

Luxury conglomerate Farfetch acquired a minority stake in Off-White's parent company, New Guards Group, in 2019. (New Guards itself was later sold to Farfetch outright.) When Farfetch collapsed into administration in late 2023, Off-White's future became, briefly, uncertain. The brand was eventually absorbed into a restructured entity, but the turbulence was real. Store openings slowed. Wholesale partnerships contracted.

Sales, according to industry estimates, have softened. Off-White is no longer in Lyst's top ten. The resale market for its signature pieces has cooled. A yellow industrial belt that once commanded £300 on StockX now sits closer to retail, if it moves at all. The Nike collaborations continue — there are archive models still in the pipeline, designed before Abloh's death — but new partnerships are fewer.

Part of this is timing. The streetwear boom that lifted Off-White in the mid-2010s has receded. Logomania is out. Irony, as a design language, feels less urgent in 2025 than it did in 2017. The market has moved toward quiet luxury, toward Loro Piana and The Row, toward clothes that signal wealth through fabric and cut rather than text and branding.

But part of it is structural. Off-White was never just a brand. It was Virgil Abloh — his references, his contradictions, his ability to be in five places at once and make it look effortless. Without him, the house is a set of design codes in search of a reason to exist.

Kamara's collections have been thoughtful, often moving. But they have not been commercial in the way Off-White needs them to be. The brand still operates flagship stores in Paris, Milan, London, New York, Tokyo. It still shows at Paris Fashion Week. It still releases seasonal collections, collaborations, limited capsules. But it no longer feels inevitable.

What remains

There is a photograph from Abloh's final Louis Vuitton show, spring/summer 2022, held in Miami six days after his death. The runway is outdoors, on a beach. The models walk in silence. At the end, the entire audience — Kanye, Kim, Rihanna, Pharrell — stands. Some are crying. The collection itself is secondary. What matters is the fact of it: that Abloh made it, that it exists, that we are here to witness it.

Off-White, in some sense, is still living in that moment. It is a house built by one man, trying to continue without him. Kamara has brought grace to the task. The design team has kept the atelier running. But grace and competence are not the same as vision, and vision is what Off-White was.

There are rumours, occasionally, of a new creative director. A name that could reboot the brand, attract a younger audience, restore commercial momentum. So far, nothing has materialised. The house continues as it is: a monument to what it was, unsure of what it should become.

Walk into the Off-White store on rue Saint-Honoré and you will find the diagonal stripes, the arrows, the occasional cable-tie. You will find well-made clothes at luxury prices. You will not find the yellow industrial belt. It is still in the archive, still referenced in editorials about the 2010s, still a signifier of a particular moment in fashion. But it is not for sale. The store assistant, when asked, will tell you it has been discontinued. She will not say why. She does not need to.