Fashion brands extending their reach into new categories happens all the time.
However for a while now, luxury brands have had their sights set on beauty in particular, a way to offer a relatively accessible product to customers without diminishing the cachet of its clothing or accessories.
Designer label Off-White has always been big on defying any pigeonholes, so a new extension into beauty, one designed to appeal regardless of age, background or gender, should not be surprising. Nonetheless, the announcement of the brand’s new beauty line ‘Paperwork’ is causing some major buzz.
Conceived by the brand’s founder and CEO, Virgil Abloh, prior to his untimely passing in November last year, Paperwork includes a collection of makeup, fragrance and nail polish.
“The first beauty collection from Off-White™ manifests Virgil Abloh’s vision of a blank canvas to inspire endless creativity, ” the brand announces on its website.
“Designed to encourage human potential, “PAPERWORK” provides a toolkit for self-expression, whatever form that may take. Tapping into smell, sight and touch, the genderless collection includes SOLUTION fragrances, IMPRINT face and body solid pigments, and COLOR MATTER nail polishes.”
The four Solution fragrances are the first to be released, simply numbered 1- 4 so as to forgo any gender connotations. The bottle is adorned with a red, industrial-style handle for a cap.
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Solution 1 is said to be an interpretation of the smell of sand, “in all its transparent and airy facets”. It has elements of Ho Wood and Bergamot top notes, a sand accord at its core and a woody base of vetiver and patchouli.
Solution 2 is a ‘joyful fragrance full of contrasts’ with notes of citrus and ginger on a woody base.
Solution 3 is a ‘modern and racy fragrance’ yanking damask rose into the present day with a balance of musk and ambrette.
Solution 4 is a ‘fresh urban aroma with chic, streetwear spirit’ where eucalyptus, lavender and woods meet black leather.
“Crafted by Virgil Abloh in collaboration with celebrated perfumers Alexis Dadier, Jerome Epinette, and Sidonie Lancesseur, four Solutions connect the dots between scent and imagination taking inspiration from ’90s nostalgia, bougie classics and natural earth elements,” says the brand.
Further additions to the line expected to drop shortly include Imprint, a range of pigmented colour sticks for the face and body, and Color Matter, a range of six nail polishes in innovative finishes, including Decode, a white polish with a self-cracking formula meant to resemble shattered concrete.
