There was an equestrian mood in last night’s Off-White collection, but Virgil Abloh was a soccer fan first. There’s a rumored Off-White x Nike World Cup collab in the works, and last May, Abloh and Nike designed jerseys for Melting Passes, a team of immigrant soccer players in Paris. Because they lacked proper residency status, they were unable to join any “official” soccer teams—so Melting Passes founders Maud Angliviel and Pierre Rosin started their own. The jerseys weren’t exactly up to par, though. A few serendipitous encounters later—and an introduction to Abloh by Vogue Editor in Chief Anna Wintour—and the idea for an Off-White collaboration came naturally.
At the time, Abloh and Nike made graphic jerseys for 30 players, who helped select the colors. Less than a year later, the team has grown to 60—and in 2017, they won the FSGT league championship. At last night’s Off-White show on Rue Cambon, the partnership came full circle: Abloh invited 16 of the players to attend and gave them a first look at the collection backstage. “It was an amazing experience to complete the loop full circle last night,” he says. “Meeting with Anna [Wintour] and the Melting Passes boys before my show, just two months after the idea came to be—the whole project has been quite fulfilling.”
Vaboi Conde, a Melting Passes player, said it was the players’ first-ever fashion show and the first time they met Abloh. Backstage before the show, they changed into their Off-White x Nike jerseys—T-shirts in pale orange and blue, covered in graphics and spray-painted in Abloh’s Italian factory—and had the chance to meet another one of their idols: American football player Odell Beckham, Jr. “I’ve seen him on TV, but seeing him last night, I couldn’t really imagine it was him,” Conde says. “I asked everyone, ‘Is that really Odell Beckham, Jr.?’ And they said, ‘Of course!’ So I talked to him, and it was so emotional.” As for the show itself, which was jam-packed with editors, buyers, and excited fans, he said: “The clothes, the way they moved, the decoration—it was so amazing. And everyone was speaking English!”
The Melting Passes have a game tonight at 8:00 p.m. and will no doubt feel even more connected to the brand that made the team’s jerseys. “I think [Abloh’s] idea from the beginning was to give them outfits to feel empowered,” Angliviel told Vogue last year. That’s a key ingredient in the recipe for success; we have a feeling they’re Off-White fans for life.
