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Virgil Abloh is a more of a “designer” than a designer. The part-time DJ has certainly made a lot of noise since sweeping into fashion on Kanye West’s coattails and making his own mark in the luxury streetwear sector with Off-White’s graphic black-and-white diagonal stripes plastered on jean jackets. His catchy branding and orbit of music/fashion/streetwear influencers has minted him collaborations with Nike, Jimmy Choo and Rimowa, and, for a hot second, put his name in the same sentences as Givenchy and Versace when succession has come up.
In his recent collections, Abloh has distanced himself from the street thing. For spring, he let the ghost of Princess Diana, passed away 20 years ago now, haunt his kitschy lineup of her most photographed Eighties/Nineties looks. The collection was called “Natural Woman.” Her crisp white shirt was cut into a crop top and layered with a ruched off-the-shoulder bra top and worn over hot-pink moiré pants. Her casual khaki jacket, mom jeans and white pumps became a cropped blazer with puffed sleeves and self-belted light wash jeans tucked into padded white booties. Versions of her little black off-the-shoulder “revenge dress,” worn the day Prince Charles publicly admitted adultery, included a tight one-shouldered style with tulle ruffles down the sleeve, and an off-the-shoulder crop top worn over tightly tailored Bermuda shorts. The models wore black sunglasses hanging from Croakies stamped with XOXO and carried clutches shaped in the branded font of magazine titles: People, Life, Time.
A Google image search of Lady Di pulls up photos of all of Abloh’s inspirations, yet the collection played like an Eighties “Working Girl” send-up. The references were vague and generic enough that you had to be told in order to pick up on the Diana theme. More affected than nostalgic, the collection didn’t feel like it belonged to her or to Abloh, who didn’t imbue the clothes with a proprietary direction.