So far only one of the Off-White for Church's styles has been unveiled. Abloh took the British shoemaker's elegantly-crafted, brogue Oxford Burwood design, which dates back to 1953, and gave it
a contemporary lift. Where the original handmade shoe came with a brown suede upper, the Off-White version comes with a brushed calfskin overlay.
Meanwhile, each shoe comes adorned with the Ablohisms that became associated with the former Louis Vuitton artistic designer of menswear. “Special Events” is screen printed in his favoured Helvetica font along the outer of the formal silhouette, while the laces are similarly decorated with “Shoe Laces”. Elsewhere the brogues come with a leather take on the plastic hang tags you'd recognize from Off-White's sneaker designs.
It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the Church's team permitted Abloh to reinterpret its classic shoes, which long-standing fans of the brand will likely protest need little-to-no improvement.
Abloh made a name for himself reimagining the most iconic sneaker designs in footwear history. In 2017 he introduced “The Ten”, his own take on Nike's most popular silhouettes including the Air Jordan 1 and Zoom Vaporfly. Elsewhere he brought sneakers to the fore of the Louis Vuitton brand, introducing the LV trainer in an array of colors, as well as concocting a Nike and LV collaborative Air Jordan design in 2021.
The Off-White for Church's Burwood brogues are available at off-white.com, church-footwear.com and Church's stores tomorrow, March 24th.
This story originally ran onBritish GQwith the title “Your first look at the Off-White x Church's collaboration”