Yesterday, a group of fashionable hip-hop personalities gathered at the colette boutique in Paris, which became the unlikely site of two heated brawls, both involving 19-year-old model Ian Connor, who has served as a creative consultant for both Kanye West and A$AP Rocky. Connor, various members of the A$AP clan, and Theophilus London were there for the joint launch of the new clothing lines of both Off-White, the high-fashion label of Kanye's creative director, Virgil Abloh, as well as VLONE, an Off-White-affiliated brand that was started by A$AP Rocky and A$AP Bari.
Things quickly turned sour when a video surfaced showing a tense confrontation between London and Connor. London then began to blast Connor on Twitter, and before long, another video surfaced of Connor approaching London and punching him in the face. It took the efforts of Rocky and others to break up the fight, and security soon escorted those involved out of the boutique. Once outside, however, the situation proceeded to get even more hostile, as A$AP Bari sprinted toward Connor and connected on a furious punch to the side of his face.
Once again, the conflict was seemingly diffused after one punch, but both London and Bari continued to rebuke Connor on Twitter, and they finally prompted him to respond to each of them, and he did so with a scathing rant full of shocking allegations. Connor accused Bari of being envious of his rise in the fashion world, and more disturbingly, he claimed to have evidence that London is both a drug addict and a child molester.
A day after the high-fashion brawls made headlines, Virgil Abloh was asked to respond to his event being overshadowed by the scuffle between a few of his noted friends and collaborators. Speaking to WWD, Abloh didn't seem too distressed about the conflict, saying, "They're all brothers, so it's basically watching a bunch of brothers fight." He also expressed that he sees himself as a "camp counselor" in relation to the guys involved in yesterday's fight and that he might need to do a better job in "leading by example." Read his full quote below:
"It was totally fine. I looked at it as, like, a casualty — I call it me being a camp counselor. I probably knew it was going to happen. It’s just all the energy, but it’s like them being them. But I believe you can’t just like kids when it’s good. I’m not an educator or anything like that. And it’s not about that. It’s just about leading by example.”
