This post was originally published on this site
PARIS — On Thursday night, Virgil Abloh, the rising streetwear designer, sometime D.J. and longtime creative consultant to Kanye West, staged his latest Off-White show in the echoing halls of a university on the Left Bank to a front row of paparazzi-bait.
Mr. West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, resplendent in a sheer bandeau top, cutaway pleather sports pants and billowing, oversize leopard-print fleece, arrived hand-in-hand a mere 30 minutes after the show was meant to start (early by their standards) to support their friend and consigliere. Ms. Kardashian West had both her mother, Kris Jenner, and sister, Kourtney Kardashian, in tow. The singer Frank Ocean made a cameo, too.
They were all perched nervously on seats — bright blue Styrofoam blocks printed with the Off-White logo — that wobbled with the slightest movement (and after the show were taken by audience members looking for souvenirs).
A sizable coterie of editors and buyers had come to the show, too, curious to see more from the man who, alongside the likes of Demna Gvasalia, has emerged as a lodestar of casual streetwear in the heart of deeply uncasual Parisian high fashion. After all, Mr. Abloh, born in Rockford, Ill., was the only American nominated for the prestigious LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers in 2015.
This season, his collection was titled “Business Woman.” Drawing inspiration from Mike Nichols’s 1988 movie “Working Girl,” it offered a slick, athletic rewrite of the script around retro ideas of office-appropriate attire. Think oversize blue pinstripe shirts with asymmetric hems, taken off the shoulder and paired with skintight denim and white over-the-knee boots; double-breasted blazers worn as dresses; loose black pinstripe slacks with denim track-pant stripes; and a sharp black pantsuit trailing into bright, billowing multicolor flares.
Mr. Abloh has made clear that he has his sights set on taking the helm of a major fashion house; those currently crowned, in the words of Mr. West, had better watch the throne.