Virgil Abloh's IKEA Range Revealed

With the internet aflame over Hailey Bieber's custom Virgil Abloh wedding dress featuring the phrase "TILL DEATH DO US PART", fans can get hold of some Abloh for themselves. The Louis Vuitton's menswear artistic director and founder of OFF-WHITE has joined forces with Swedish furniture giants IKEA, to create a stylish homeware range, called MARKERAD. The 15-piece collection will bring high-fashion interiors at an affordable price.

Unsurprisingly, Abloh's signature minimalistic style is all over the limited-edition drop. The designer has brought his signature wit to everyday objects, giving ordinary items an unexpected design twist. Reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp's so-calledready-made sculptures, Abloh has created a rug to look like an IKEA receipt and a carrier bag that reads "SCULPTURE" in bold text.

While many designers put all their might into their fashion collections, others' creative endeavours don't stop there. We are seeing a wave of fashion designers exploring all things furniture, interior fabrics and homeware. For example, Rick Owens' solo furniture exhibition has just opened to the general public at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London. Furthermore, since 2014, Raf Simons has worked with Kvadrat, a global textiles company, to produce textiles suited to a broad range of interior applications, and in 2017 Gucci unveiled a homeware line, under the name of Gucci Décor, which it describes as 'an eclectic collection of items with which customers can dress their own spaces.'

Interestingly, homeware seems like a hot topic on Abloh's mind as in August of this year, the designer revealed a homeware line for OFF-WHITE, separate from the IKEA range.

Abloh said of the collaboration, 'I want each item to bring people a sense of pride, and I want great design to be the biggest reason why you get it. It’s about elevating the anonymous, everyday icons that we use without noticing. When we put a doorstop on one of the legs of an ordinary chair, we create something unexpected – an interruption.'

He added, 'This collaboration has been the most rigorous of any design project I’ve done. There are only a few moments in a design career that you get to work with the absolute best in class, and my concept of design resonates with IKEA’s democratic design principles, with the idea that great design can be accessible for the many people.'

Henrik Most, Creative Leader at IKEA, said of the collaboration, “I was impressed working with Virgil, and love how he takes modern design into a contemporary context. It would be quite boring if he just replicated modern design, but by taking history and tradition and interpreting it in his own unique way, he creates design which very much appeals to our time. Here at IKEA, we love to collaborate with experts from different industries to ensure that we can respond directly to current trends and combine influences to give our customers unique, cutting-edge design.” 

In fact, IKEA previously collaborated with Solange Knowles. IKEA x SAINT HERON, subtitled 'Objects, Space, Architecture', took inspiration from art, music, fashion, urban culture and architecture and aiming to design objects with multifunctional use.

Due to unprecedented demand, IKEA have announced that fans hoping to get their hands on MARKERAD will have to sign up for a limited number of free tickets via Eventbrite at 10am on 18 October, available through the IKEA website. Fans who secure a place at their chosen participating store (IKEA Dublin, Croydon and Wembley) can then purchase up to five pieces from the collection when they visit on their allocated day on 1, 2 or 3 November. Access will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more information, visit: www.ikea.co.uk/MARKERAD