In this time of political protest, terrorism, warfare, and the mass displacement of people, what good can mere fashion do? Virgil Abloh, for one, decided that he was going to say something big with his Off-White menswear show in Florence. “It’s my Trojan horse model,” he said before the presentation began at the Pitti Palace. “I’m a millennial brand. Kids will go and research the messaging they see on Instagram. Are we talking about garments or are we talking about the world at large?” There could be no shadow of a doubt what he meant for those who were there—including many invited members of the public—and those who watched from afar via social media. He had vast projections of searing text describing the sufferings of civilians in war scrolling down the outside of the building, as the models, tiny by comparision, filed beneath.

The work was a collaboration with Jenny Holzer, whom he said he identifies with because of “our use of wording.” Holzer selected poetry from Anna Swirszcynska, written during the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and voices from conflicts that are happening right now in Syria and Palestine—Omid Shams, Ghayath Almadhoun, Osama Alomar, and others. The impact was overwhelming, disturbing, and deliberate. Abloh, the son of an immigrant from Ghana, feels a social and humanitarian responsibility to speak to the plight of refugees. “In this climate, coming off recent elections, I have a voice. In my work, I react,” he explained.

Guests had already been sent orange T-shirts printed with graphics. No ordinary show-off branded T-shirt, it carried the visual instructions for putting on a life vest on the front and “I’ll never forgive the ocean,” a line by Shams, on the back. Many hundreds of people have drowned, and continue to do so, in crossing the Mediterranean from Syria and Africa in hopes of a better life. Italy, where Abloh’s fashion has always been manufactured, is one of the first desperate ports of call. That awareness directly affected the design of his collection, he said: “I was zeroing in on a life raft, the colors, the warnings, the plastic.”

Utilitarian tropes found in clothing worn by rescue workers and the rescued inspired shapes reminiscent of inflatable vests, mariner’s hoods, and so on. Off-White is a streetwear brand consumed by very young men; that’s why Alboh has the power to speak directly to a young “woke” generation, but, he pointed out, he has aspirations for them in terms of elevating streetwear pieces beyond the generic. Sport T-shirts came bisected with invisible zippers; the shorts shorter and wider. “It’s about showing a new proportion and crashing it together with tailoring,” he said. “We’re here at Pitti! People often ask me, ‘Why don’t young people wear tailoring?’ Well, it’s because people don’t make tailoring for them!”

With this collection, Abloh has had a go at bridging that sartorial generation gap, with high-waisted floral jacquard wide-leg pants (the only nod to the Renaissance surroundings, perhaps) and by readdressing the structure of a white dress shirt, implanting it with zippers so the collar can be worn half on, half off, at will. That Abloh used the Pitti Immagine opportunity to speak to a bigger agenda was a step up in his stature that was good to see. At the end, the visual image of the designer walking with his horde of models along the perimeter of the Pitti Palace square under Holzer’s projection hit home. How many other groups of men exactly their age have we seen in news footage, crossing continents?

Sarah Mower vogue. com