Have you ever wondered what an evening with an influential fashion brand would be like? Wonder no more, because Grazia has the inside look at Off-White’s “Imaginary Experience”: a three-part event in the Middle East that transported guests into a new world for the night of March 31st.
The “Imaginary Experience” was an evening dedicated to the power of imagination and its potent potential to stretch our perception of the world. The night was focused on the arts and began with a Trunk Show of the late Virgil Abloh’s High Fashion collection at Studio 7, a design concept store that focuses on Arab culture. Afterwards, the guests migrated to a candlelit dining destination on a remote farm in Doha, where public figures, like Naomi Campbell and HE Sheikha Al Mayassa, enjoyed a culinary experience outdoors underneath the night’s sky. To complete the event, Qatar Creates held its final show of Virgil Abloh’s “Figures of Speech” exhibition at the Doha Fire Station. It offered an in-depth review of Abloh’s work over the last twenty years–revealing the thought processes behind his most influential designs.
Industry experts have wondered if there could be an Off-White without Virgil Abloh after his passing in November 2021. That’s because its late founder and creative director was closely linked to the brand’s identity, in a way that not many founders are today. He was an inventive ideas person who questioned the utility of fashion in his work, creating brand signatures such as meta quotation marks. The “Imaginary Experience” is a message from the brand, communicating that its DNA is still intact and taking cues from Abloh as it moves forward.
The designer’s primary principle, “question everything,” was the basis for this imagination-centred evening. From the unique layout of the Trunk Show at Studio 7 to the exquisite culinary experience, guests were encouraged to open their minds throughout the night–tapping into their own imagination during Off-White’s “Imaginary Experience.”
