An Unlikely Pairing
What do the fashion label, Off-White, and pink insulation have in common? Seemingly nothing. And yet, the luxury brand photographed sharp-cheeked models in front of the material for their 2020 Fall-Winter men’s collection. The unlikely pairing may reveal more than meets the eye. Read on to learn why.
Paris Fashion Week: the epitome of style and elegance. During the 2020 Fall-Winter show, the brand Off-White simultaneously stood out as an avant-garde challenger, but also fit in among its luxury counterparts. Their clothing is made from the best material available with particular attention paid to fabric, fit, and fabrication. The multi-talented visionary, Virgil Abloh, leads the brand, which is based in Milan.
Ahead of their runway show titled “Tornado Warning,” Off-White photographed the men’s collection in front of pink insulation made by Owens Corning. Sharp-cheeked male models wearing expensive clothes posed in front of the material. But why?
One simple answer is that Abloh graduated with a master’s degree in architecture. His studies may have exposed him to the material often used in commercial and residential construction, but that answer is unsatisfactory. When a brand sells $1,000 sweatshirts, the creative director doesn’t just plop models in front of any backdrop. The decision was intentional to convey some sort of meaning about the brand. One of the photographers on the shoot told me an artist made the set, but he didn’t have any additional information. Further exploration is required.
The maker of the iconic pink stuff is Owens Corning, an Ohio based Fortune 500 company that makes insulation, roofing, and fiberglass composites. Their insulation is industrious and high tech, but it is also invisible – never seen in the home once enshrined behind drywall.
Perhaps that obscurity appealed to Abloh and his team: making the unseen seen; deconstructing what is often hidden. This interpretation seems consistent with other elements of the runway show and with the brand overall. For instance, when the models finished strutting down the catwalk they did not disappear backstage as is typical in other fashion shows. Instead, they congregated in the center of the room behind a sheer cloth. The models were both visible and invisible. Even the brand’s name evokes this liminal space in its motto: “defining the gray area between black and white as the color of Off-White.” On a deeper societal level, the process of bringing something from the background to the foreground is analogous with Abloh’s mission in the industry. On the eve of becoming the first Black man to design his own line at Louis Vuitton, he told W “We were a generation that was interested in fashion and weren’t supposed to be there.” Abloh is changing that now. His aim is to “open doors for black creativity and keep them open for future generations” through various initiatives under the name “Post-Modern.”
In a 2017 interview, Abloh said, “I work in a collaborative tornado every day.” For this reason, we may never know the exact meaning he and his team intended to signal by using the insulation as the backdrop for the shoot. However, as consumers, we are all co-authors of meaning. We filter images, text, video, and spoken word through our own perspective based on our cultural subscriptions. As such, all brands must recognize that their consumers define the product by assigning meaning to it. Scott Cook, the co-founder of Intuit, said it best, “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.” In fact, this logic is exactly why Off-White can sell a $1,000 sweatshirt. Because we signal to each other that it is a highly coveted material object that imbues us with prestige when we wear it.
In any event, back to insulation. Owens Corning took notice of Off-White’s handiwork and shared the photo on their Facebook page, thanking the luxury brand “for recognizing the power of Pink to push design and culture forward.” Despite the incongruity between high fashion and home insulation, the combination somehow works, bringing disparate things together. The best evidence of this sentiment is in the Facebook comments where one mom writes “Awesome! My son loves Off-White, and I work at Owens Corning, he will get a kick out of the two being together. #OCPROUD.”
