In the virtual reality of Off-White, perhaps clothes don’t need to make sense at all.
The Spring 2025 collection at Off-White, shown for the first time at New York Fashion Week, is made up of 42 complex looks that seem to answer: If I wanted to dress like a sexy video game character, what would I wear?
Looks that appear to be the outfit of a cartoon motorcycle rider — with stylized lines printed on red spandex-looking fabric to indicate muscles and movement — helped to create this illusion. Exposed chests branded with a small “OFF” in black letters also made the models look more like action figures, strutting down Brooklyn Bridge Park turned runway.
The brand’s streetwear DNA shone through in the color palette, which maintained a very motor-urban feel with red, black, military green, and white, and details like black gloves for the fingers only, or thong-sandals sported primarily by male models. The high-fashion side, too, shone through, in plunging necklines that run all the way down below the belly button and skirts with a bedazzled diagonal layer.
A sheer, tight, light brown hoodie encrusted with silver beads hugged the torso and head of a male model irreverently. Belts with buckles that spelled SEX in big silver letters completed otherwise tame looks of jeans and a tight tank top. A camo pattern of browns and bright red that would completely defeat the purpose of camouflaging anything tied in the absurdity of video game costumes: completely flashy and impractical, worn to do impossible things.
This collection played mostly with shape: adding layers to pants along the waist or making tightly-fitted mock-necked long sleeves a bit unexpected with cut-outs over the hips. A hoodie with a painted geometric pattern is turned into a high-fashion piece with cutouts on the chest beside the shoulders and a V-shaped bottom hem. Paired with a skirt that has equally geometric cutouts near the hips and is adorned with feathers near the bottom, the look is doing everything at once.
And perhaps that is the common thread of this collection: it does everything at once. It is filled with tension, which, from a streetwear perspective, is necessary to succeed. In the virtual reality of Off-White, perhaps clothes don’t need to make sense at all. 🌀 7.4
Laura Rocha-Rueda is a Colombian fashion and fiction writer based in Brooklyn who holds a Creative Writing MFA from The New School. She is your local Swiftie and will gladly chat about anything glittery and soft, and about why dismissing pop culture as frivolous is misguided and sad.