Off-White founder Virgil Abloh’s collection for Ikea drops in the UAE

The artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton and founder of Off-White has designed a 15-piece collection for Ikea

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 03: Virgil Abloh attends the CFDA Fashion Awards at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on June 03, 2019 in New York City. Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images/AFP

As artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton and founder of the much-coveted luxury streetwear label, Off-White, Virgil Abloh is currently one of the hottest names in fashion.

He is used to causing a stir with high-profile product drops – but perhaps even he wouldn’t have foreseen the frenzy that his latest launch, a collaboration with Swedish homeware giant Ikea, caused this weekend, with fans around the world queuing up to pick up a piece of the Abloh magic at a fraction of the usual cost.

The 15-piece Markerad collection was developed in partnership with Ikea’s creative leader Henrik Most. The duo conducted extensive research into the lives of young adults, in order to understand their needs as they moved out on their own for the first time.

The resultant collection take the brand’s classic minimalist design and imbues it with the deconstructed elements typical of Abloh's work. His signature quotation marks are found throughout the collection, as is his inherent sense of humour. An Ikea receipt is transformed into a rug, door stops are added to table legs, a full-length mirror looks like it has a crack in its top left corner, the ubiquitous blue Ikea bag has been redesigned and now has the word "sculpture" written across its front, and a high-pile rug in deep green has the words “wet grass” emblazoned across it, as if they have been hastily spray-painted on.

“I want each item to bring people a sense of pride, and I want the great design to be the biggest reason why you get it,” Abloh says. “It’s about elevating the anonymous, everyday icons that we use without noticing. When we put a doorstop on one of the legs of an ordinary chair we create something unexpected – an interruption.”