Nearly ten years ago now, Virgil Abloh launched his Off-White brand and in the decade since, Virgil has used a combination of sports, hip-hop, design, and celebrity to become one of the most loved and hated names in the sneaker and streetwear cultures. As a Chicagoan, Abloh's creativity is deeply rooted in a place most can relate to, the '90s. Or, more specifically, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls and how they became not only The Windy City's inspiration but the way they became a form of expressiveness for the entire world and the world of pop culture. With the help of his own creative circle of friends that includes the likes of Kanye West, Don C, Jerry Lorenzo, and Heron Preston, Virgil has taken his experiences and transformed them into an inexplicable world of creative outputs that have shifted the culture of sneakers and beyond, and simultaneously, made him one of the most polarizing people on the planet.

While the hype of nearly every Off-White release has undoubtedly kept Virgil's name and brand at the top of the resale market, it's also kept the anticipation for the next release going as well. Off-White has remained an essential talking point in the sneaker conversation since those first releases back in 2017. While there have been a lot of crazy, intriguing, industry-changing, and also plenty of boring things happening in the sneaker game since that time, you would be hard-pressed to find a day where the sneaker blogs and major social media accounts were not including Off-White collabs in their narrative. On one hand, you could argue that these types of accounts and publishers are simply doing what they have to do to keep the clicks and likes coming in. On the other, there is no denying that A LOT of people really truly like what Virgil has done since he began collaborating with major brands.

Is It Art?

History has proven that success for an artist in the modern era is more formulaic than we might think. If you look at someone like Keith Haring in the '80s, Shepard Fairey in the '90s, and KAWS in the 2000s, the rinse and repeat nature is a key to becoming commercially successful. While I'd remind you that as a creative or an artist (or simply a human being), true success is the ability to not compare yourself or your work to others, making money, which is still the most societally accepted measure of achievement, requires an unyielding commitment to making you and your work recognizable by the masses, now more than ever.

That said, competition is also more prevalent than ever because of social media. As I mentioned before, there was another designer meant to also be a part of Nike's "The Ten."

In late 2017, a few months after the launch of Virgil's Off-White x Nike collaboration, Hiroshi Fujiwara of fragment design revealed that he also had been working with Nike on the same project. Hiroshi and his fragment design label have a long history of collaborating with Nike and Jordan Brand but the thing about creatives and collaborations is that brands like Nike are always looking to the future to find the next wave they can attach their Swoosh to. It creates competitiveness whether the designers and creatives working with the brand like it or not. That competition seeps into the world of consumers and ultimately starts to divide people who oftentimes get lumped into the old school and new school labels. It works the same way in the art world. There is only so much space in the gallery to go around.

When it comes to old school vs. new school attitude, I find myself torn. I'm a fan of the history, I love the traditional Air Jordans, and in this example, I've been a fan of Hiroshi's fragment design for a long time. On the flip side, I'm a super fan of the sneaker world and the footwear industry as a whole, and that means seeing the energy that someone like Virgil Abloh brings to the business is undeniable, and exponentially valuable in inspiring the next generation, whether half the world fails to understand him or not. I find myself inspired by Virgil's ability to navigate the political challenges and sensitiveness of the sneakerheads, but in some way, I feel like I'm not the target consumer for the super-limited in nature releases  since I don't own any Off-White collabs and have never put in much effort to get them. At the end of the day, I'd take a pair of Chicago Jordan 1s over the Off-White version if the price were the same.

I guess that's the beauty of artistic creation, though. In the case of sneakers, my feet and my sneakers are my gallery and become my story, and it's perfectly fine for you to curate your own gallery and tell your own story through the shoes you wear.