Off White Timberland

In 2013, after having already worked for Fendi at the Italian label’s headquarters in Rome, Virgil Abloh (1980–2021) founded the Milan-based streetwear house Off-White, which is lauded for its hip collaborations and range of sneakers and shoes, shirts, hoodies and bags that are frequently emblazoned with bold graphics and the iconography of America’s metropolitan centers.

Four years later, Abloh released the first Off-White furniture line, Grey Area. In 2018, he became the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear division, making him one of the first Black designers to head a French luxury fashion house. By the time he celebrated his 40th birthday, the Illinois native had, seemingly, triumphed in every corner of the fashion and home design worlds. 

Yet even with the Off-White and Louis Vuitton jobs, Abloh had time for a seemingly endless list of collaborations: designing shoes for Nike and Jimmy Choo, making furniture for Vitra and Ikea (“a super-dream project”), creating art with Takashi Murakami and Jenny Holzer, dressing Serena Williams and Beyoncé, co-branding with Levi’s and Evian, deejaying at Coachella and Lollapalooza.

Growing up outside Chicago, the son of Ghanaian immigrants, Abloh was neither cool nor controversial. He was, he told the New York Times, “an average sort of suburban kid, born in 1980, into watching Michael Jordan or listening to Guns N’ Roses.” He learned about design, fabrication and color from his mother, a seamstress, and his father, a paint company manager. Abloh earned a master’s degree in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where his thesis was a skyscraper that leans out over the Chicago River to maximize light and views. 

Abloh's process was incredibly innovative — he explained that if he was inspired by an object, he didn’t want to alter it any more than necessary. “I’m only interested in editing an idea or a concept by three percent,” he said. Not surprisingly, he flirted with the limits of permissible appropriation. His first clothing line consisted of flannel Ralph Lauren shirts on which he printed the word “Pyrex.” (Abloh’s Pyrex Vision label would later become Off-White.)

And his collaboration with Vitra included a version of Jean Prouvé’s Antony chair that has Plexiglass where Prouvé used plywood. In 2017, the Belgian designer Raf Simons told GQ that Abloh’s work was unoriginal. A month later, Abloh presented an Off-White collection cheekily titled Nothing New.

Find vintage Off-White clothing on 1stDibs.

Whether they’re Hermès sandals, black Jimmy Choo boots, ivory-leather-and-pink-daisy heels by sublime shoemaker Manolo Blahnik or Christian Louboutin platform pumps, you can find your next pair of legendary luxury vintage and designer shoes today on 1stDibs.

Shoes offered by the likes of Versace, Chanel, Charles Jourdan or Prada are integral to completing your carefully orchestrated street-style or evening ensemble these days, but footwear wasn’t always the big deal it is for your average Adidas enthusiast.

The decorative floor-length gowns that upper-class women of the 18th century wore meant that their shoes, then likely featuring high curved heels finished with woven or embroidered silks — a sharp contrast to the heavy, rudimentary form of the era’s footwear for men — were partially or entirely obscured by the base of their ornate dresses. What good is fashion if it’s tucked away?

Our modern age’s legions of sneakerheads might have trouble tracking down a pair of black-and-gold vintage Jordans but can at least fill their dream closets with original Adidas Gazelles or 1980s New Balances if they put the time in, while 1990s-era Prada pumps or a good pair of mid-20th-century jewel-tone heels in satin or silk haven’t lost their allure with today’s nostalgic fashionistas.

A pair of shoes can commemorate an achievement, mark an important trip overseas and is sometimes a rich manifestation of a hard-won physical feat. On 1stDibs, find Chanel flats or two-tone heels, Christian Dior pumps, vintage Margiela Tabi boots and many more designer shoes today.