When, not long after the designer Virgil Abloh’s unexpected death, New Guards Group, the company that manufactured Off-White, Mr. Abloh’s fashion label, approached Ibrahim Kamara about taking over the house, no one was more surprised than he.
Mr. Kamara was not, after all, a designer. He had never considered being a designer. He was a stylist and the editor of Dazed magazine who had dreamed of being a musician when he was a child growing up in Sierra Leone and Gambia, and whose work explored the bleeding edge of gender, politics and self-expression.
Sure, he had gone to Central Saint Martins. (He and his family had emigrated to London when he was 16.) Sure, he had been working with Mr. Abloh at Off-White and Louis Vuitton men’s wear, but for only two years. There were plenty of people who did not think Mr. Abloh could be replaced at all, that he was too singular a cultural figure.
But then, Mr. Kamara said recently, he thought V — he called Mr. Abloh V — “invented a whole new expression of what fashion can be for a generation of kids, and it’s important that it continue.” So he said yes. For him, he said, “Off-White is a concept, and concepts can evolve.”.
Exactly how it has evolved will become clear on Sept. 8, when Mr. Kamara, now 34, brings his version of Off-White to New York Fashion Week for the first time, holding his show on the community basketball courts of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
