Off-White’s creative director IB Kamara is moved, first and foremost, by music. While growing up in Sierra Leone and Gambia, he hoped to one day become a musician. As a student at Central Saint Martins, he delved into the London club scene. During his fashion career, he has styled and collaborated with artists like Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Harry Styles. No doubt an invisible string ties Kamara to the very thing that ignited his creative spirit in the first place, the rhythm that led him to Off-White. For Kamara’s sixth season as the label’s creative director, his music affinity inspired the collection’s backdrop: a graffiti mural by local artists that looks over New York City’s skyline.
“This is a coming home,” Kamara explains a few days before the show. “You can trace New York’s energy in each of the graffiti works.” He asked four local artists to reimagine the nightlife and music of the five vibrant New York City boroughs. Side by side, each work decorates the rooftop courts at The New Design High School with a melody of colors, phrases, and cultural references. The finished mural is subversive by nature: soft, pastel, feminine and imaginative. It remains true to the late Virgil Abloh’s Off-White legacy: his own hand-graffitied art decorated the stadium seating of his Paris show in July of 2021. In Kamara’s words, “It’s a marriage between me and Off-White and the codes Virgil left.”
While handpicking era-defining graffiti artists to compile the mural, Kamara gravitated to individuals Off-White has long admired for their craft. The artist Chris Daze Ellis, who began his graffiti career in the mid ’70s and once showed his works alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, represents The Bronx, where he has worked for the last 48 years. “It was crucial to come up with a visual presentation that captures the Bronx’s rich musical and cultural history,” says Ellis. His mural shows blocks cracked open with golden microphones, breakdance silhouettes, and salsa horns.
The artist Lady Pink represents Queens and Brooklyn by reminiscing on eras past. Her Queens-dedicated graffiti art depicts layered flags and multilingual expressions; her ode to Brooklyn transmits the energy of basement beats and pays tribute to Black creativity. As an influential figure in the world of hip-hop, she called upon memories of ’90s Brooklyn to commemorate one of the most celebrated cities in music. The artist Robert “CES” Provenzano represents Staten Island with a mural of ferry waves and Wu-Tang masks fading in the wind. “I pulled from the raw language of graffiti culture, subways, trains, urban textures, and city views to bring the walls to life,” says the artist. “Each surface became its own story.” And finally, Mast, a ’90s graffiti icon who grew up spraying the city, represents Manhattan with jazz riffs, punk tags and skyscrapers.
“If you can make a connection between Off-White and graffiti, it’s that it’s for everybody,” Kamara says. “It’s public art. It’s a representation of culture.” For the creative director, catering to youth culture while still serving a wider audience is an important piece of the Off-White playbook. Graffiti will always represent youth culture, but it’s also an art that has permeated New York’s streets and galleries for decades. Beyond its multi-generational relevance, graffiti’s use of words also aligns with Abloh’s signature use of language on clothing. “Words will always be a key pillar of the brand because we will always have something to say,” Kamara says. “It’s a disruptive brand. We choose universal words because they resonate. And that is the same energy with graffiti. It’s always saying something.”
Completing the marriage between Off-White, Abloh, and Kamara is the soundtrack for the SS26 show. A true audiophile, Kamara translated the musical motifs seen in the murals into an EP made to play throughout the presentation. “I spent five days in Sweden producing an EP with the artists Azekel, Erik Bodin and Yukimi Nagano, knowing it would be the audio for the show,” he says. “I’m tapping into that musical sphere myself. Music is a core part of me, and bringing my musical taste and point of view to this show felt liberating.” Kamara describes the music as soft and melodic, showcasing all three of the musicians’ voices. If music is his love language, it makes sense that Kamara would communicate the love and thought that went into the making of each element of his second New York City show through sound.