Published 07 June 2017 • Inter IKEA newsroom

IKEA to explore design pieces for young homes with Virgil Abloh

Starting your first home, developing your own space can be both exciting and challenging. Short term rentals, small spaces, tight budgets but still a longing to express yourself through beautiful objects and design.

This reality for many young people of today made IKEA think about what we can do. That became the starting point for our collaboration with Virgil Abloh, founder of Off-White.

“We've been curious about Virgil Abloh for some time. Him being a multi creative persona who doesn't care about boundaries combined with his close connections to young people, their needs and wants. It made us curious. IKEA wants to explore the first home and how to make it inexpensive and fashionable. And we believe Virgil Abloh and Off-White is the perfect match to do that with," says Henrik Most, creative leader at IKEA Range and Supply.

This collaboration is meant to offer a provocative viewpoint on how young people consider design, and how they live with design and art at home. As living gets more crowded, we turn to other alternatives to fulfil our needs as human beings, like the neighbourhood, workplace or school. The emotional aspects of objects are changing too. This trend seems especially strong for Millennials who put higher value on emotional features, such as art and design and that the home is unique. Our aim is therefore to work together with students in this project and create unique, innovative and inspiring furnishings and decorations, which are all conceptual collector‘s pieces, as well as functional and commercial home items for everyone.

“I believe we’re in a compilation/post Tumblr generation, you take a number of images that aren’t yours and compile them to make an expression about yourself. You might not own those beautiful things or have the budget to buy them, but you put them on your page and it reflects your taste. My premise is to employ the ability to create these things in a place, with IKEA as the engine behind the thought process, so that young adults can live with design and art. Conceptually, it’s the most important design project I’ve taken on, with the highest potential to educate the consumer," says Virgil Abloh, founder of Off-White.

Off-White founder Virgil Abloh is an American architecture graduate, a fashion designer, creative director, a DJ and producer. And he brings all of his skills to bear in his loud and provocative street wear brand Off-White, a fashion label rooted in current culture.

The collection is planned to launch during 2019.