Bella Hadid opened the haute couture segment of Virgil Abloh’s final Off-White show dressed as the bride. Not just any fantasy bride. Virgil’s bride. We have seen the creative director’s wedding fashion play out on high-profile clients before, such as Hailey Bieber, but this was Abloh’s idiosyncratic way of doing big day dressing.
Bella opened the haute couture element of Off-White’s tribute to Virgil Abloh, which saw A$AP Rocky, Rihanna and Pharrell sit in the audience.
Peter White
For starters, the bride wore trainers. Hadid’s pouffe of a white wedding dress, which riffed on a traditional couture silhouette but modernised it with a mini hemline at the front, revealed a pair of thick-soled lace-ups underneath – the kind that were made for stomping about in and not giving two hoots about the train getting grubby. In her hand? Her heels: a pair of sculptural sandals that were almost as covetable as the crystal-encrusted card holder clutched in her other hand. If you didn’t get the vibe that this newlywed was out for a good time, then the veil draped over her baseball cap that read “BABE” certainly spelled it out.
“1st is for love” was the message of Hadid’s look, which was more babewear than bridalwear.
Pascal Le Segretain
The other sweet message from V, as Virgil’s friends called him, to bridal Bella was the lettering on the back of her hat. “1st is for love,” it said, symbolising the fact that everything Abloh did was, at the end of the day, for love. The love of what he did, but also the love that’s necessary to break down boundaries in a notoriously bordered business. During a fashion month that has been marred by the war in Eastern Europe, choosing love was a powerful message indeed.
