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On what would have been the 44th birthday of its late founder, Virgil Abloh, Off-White is facing an uncertain future.
LVMH on Monday announced that it would sell the Off-White LLC to Bluestar Alliance, a brand management company with a roster including labels such as Tahari, Bebe and Scotch & Soda. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.
The brand’s new owner is known for acquiring distressed labels and licensing their names, raising questions about what might become of the luxury streetwear pioneer.
“It seems as if the full-price luxury market has given up on the brand,” said Gary Wassner, chief executive of financing and factoring company Hilldun Corporation. “If you look at [Bluestar’s] roster of brands, I believe their intention would be to licence the Off-White brand into lower price-point categories.”
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That fate would contrast sharply with what LVMH originally envisioned when it increased its stake in the Off-White LLC to 60 percent in 2021, just after Abloh’s death. At the time, Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke, who hired Abloh in 2018 and was instrumental to LVMH’s relationship with the charismatic creative director, compared the brand‘s potential to that of Dior in the wake of Christian Dior’s death. “If the legacy is rich, authentic and steeped in values that go beyond fashion, the odds of turning a passing into something eternal are spectacular,” he told The Business of Fashion.
But LVMH’s vision for Off-White never came to fruition. A push into luxury fashion under new creative chief Ib Kamara failed to connect with Off-White’s core customers, and major wholesale accounts began dropping the label as the streetwear market cooled. Compounding Off-White’s issues was the tumult at New Guards Group, the Milan-based Palm Angels owner that birthed Off-White with Abloh and has been the brand’s exclusive licensor since 2014. The group was acquired by Farfetch in 2019, only to see the London-based luxury e-commerce platform pushed to the brink of collapse before being saved by South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang in December. (Off-White remains under a licensing agreement with New Guards Group until 2026.)
In recent months, Off-White has been targeting a reset. Ahead of its first-ever presentation at New York Fashion Week in September, CEO Cristiano Fagnani told BoF he aimed to reposition the brand and reconnect Off-White with its core consumers, wholesale partners and key collaborator Nike.
It’s unclear whether Bluestar Alliance will continue to invest in and pursue that strategy. In Wassner’s view, Bluestar is likely to reposition Off-White further downmarket. He pointed out that Bluestar has previously acquired flailing contemporary designer labels such as Catherine Malandrino and Nanette Lepore for the purpose of licensing.
“Our core business is licensing,” Bluestar Alliance CEO Joey Gabbay said in a sponsored story about the brand’s acquisition of Scotch & Soda on BoF. “Once we got our arms around the brand, we had our partners come in and take over certain aspects of the business.”
The company has also been sued by both Lepore and Malandrino for business practices that include allegedly cutting off the designers from their eponymous labels post-acquisition.
In a statement announcing the Off-White purchase, Gabbay said the acquisition “and the opportunity to provide strategic, investment and build upon our global network of resources will allow for the continuation of the cultural and creative momentum that Virgil ignited, one that Bluestar Alliance is committed to carrying forward.”
Shannon Abloh and Virgil Abloh Securities (a creative corporation established to maintain Abloh’s legacy) shared in a statement with BoF that they officially parted ways with Off-White in 2022 and are no longer affiliated with the brand.
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It made sense for LVMH to offload the underperforming label, according to senior retail analyst Jessica Ramirez of Jane Hali & Associates. Unlike luxury houses that have been able to thrive under a new creative director, Off-White was never the same without Abloh.
“Off-White hasn’t been the luxury brand that we knew,” she said. “It lost its way, unfortunately.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Oct. 1 to include a comment from Virgil Abloh Securities.
Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.
