The House of Ye has arrived, or at least it broke out on its own.
Kanye West, who has officially changed his name to Ye, used the platform of his ninth Yeezy show, a surprise outing in Paris, to reestablish his own fashion line and try to shake up the fashion industry again.
While the designer, musician, and provocateur introduced a collection of looks under the YZY name that lacked hardware and could simply be slipped on and off, his goal is more than just ditching the zipper.
In a speech before the show, and in the comments afterward, Ye had a personal controversy with a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt, criticized his former partner Gap and called out not only the competitors, but LVMH Moët Hennessy and the boss. Louis Vuitton Bernard Arnault. .
Ye’s “White Lives Matter” T-shirt, which featured an image of Pope John Paul II on the front, sparked a swift reaction online and at the show, with some in attendance walking away over the message they couldn’t support. When asked to explain the message after the show, Ye just pointed out, “It says it all.”
The Anti-Defamation League describes “White Lives Matter” as “a white supremacist phrase that originated in early 2015 as a racist response to the Black Lives Matter movement.”
On social media, reactions ranged from disappointment to outrage and even more active statements.
Jason Lee, who worked in communications for Yeezy, decided to end that part of their relationship after the show, responding on Instagram, “I love Ye as a person and I support freedom of expression. But this is cheating black people and empowering white supremacy. I’m not sure if he has any friends left to count him, but this is completely disappointing.
“I’m going to exercise free speech and say, no black person has ever said that white lives don’t matter. But when black people do this, it just screams the need for white validation,” Lee continued. On Tuesday, Lee, as well as others who attended the show, resurfaced Black Lives Matter posts and messages.
Ye has been similarly controversial in the past, for his support of President Donald Trump and for describing slavery as an “option.”
Kanye West at the Yeezy fashion show.
In short, Ye is remarkably consistent: he lives out loud online and in real life and takes no prisoners.
Ye began with something of a tour of his Yeezy brand so far, linking the fashion line to milestones in his own life, recalling his season four show on Roosevelt Island in New York, which started late with soaring temperatures forcing the models to pass. outside.
“If anyone remembers that show, people were falling over,” Ye said. “And that is what the press wrote. A week after that show happened, my wife at the time [Kim Kardashian] I was robbed right here in Paris. Then I told my manager at the time, Scooter Braun, that I just wanted to go to Japan, I just wanted to take a break. And he said, ‘No, we need to make more money, so we have to do a second leg of the tour.’ And that tour lasted four days and I went to the hospital.”
For Ye, it is an episode that clearly persists.
“Every time I do something great, someone brings up that moment, for the rest of my life,” Ye said, having mentioned it himself this time, perhaps re-appropriating the account of the experience. “It is the last stigma. People feel like they have the right to come up to my face and call me crazy, like that doesn’t hurt my feelings or, like, you don’t have to be crazy to change the world.”
Regardless, that seems to be the plan: change the world and take on all comers.
“We are going to start our own house tonight,” Ye said. “Sometimes the cut can be a little off, the stitch can be a little off, but we changed the look of fashion in the last 10 years. We are the streets.”
And, apparently, that’s true whether the show starts late or not.
Kanye West by Stephane Feugere
Stephane Feugere/WWD
“We will not be treated any differently than you treat any other fashion show that starts a little later just to present you with the best idea,” Ye told reporters as a preamble. “These images will last forever. This is something you couldn’t ungoogle.
“I am Ye,” he said. “And everyone here knows that I am the leader.”
Apparently, this was something the Gap C-suite, which recently agreed to end its partnership with Yeezy, didn’t understand or agree to.
“We went to the Gap, the color schemes weren’t coming back, a pair of pants was missing, a store in Atlanta wasn’t opening,” Ye complained. “It felt like we were just there to be slowed down. But there is no stopping us now… The people in the boardroom felt like they knew what the people on the streets wanted.”
But Ye will not be handled.
“This is an unmanageable situation,” he said. “You can’t turn down the music. This is God’s thing. A dream that cannot be realized without the help of God.”
And then it set its sights much higher than Gap, going from struggling American specialty retailer to pinnacle of the luxury world in Paris.
“Bernard Arnault is my new Drake,” Ye said, pointing to who he sees as his next competitor.
The elder Arnault was at one time a potential partner.
“After my first collection, Yeezy One, got more views than Chanel, I had a meeting with Bernard Arnault and he offered me a deal on the Kanye West line and three months after that, he closed the deal. So my second collection had no producer.”
(At the show was Arnault’s son, Alexandre Arnault, now executive vice president of products and communications at LVMH-owned Tiffany & Co. and a longtime fan of the rapper.)
In 2015, then a 22-year-old student, the young Arnault convinced West to perform an impromptu concert in the auditorium of his Fondation Louis Vuitton art museum.
“He’s great,” Bernard Arnault told WWD after that show, giving a thumbs-up sign.
Backstage, Ye continued Arnault’s thread. “It’s definitely the number one competition,” he said.
Asked if he would still like a deal with Arnault, Ye made it clear that he is on his own.
“No, absolutely,” Ye said. “Why would I make a deal? I run the culture.”
But managing the culture still seems to require paying the bills and working with some limitations.
If, rhetorically at least, one “can’t turn the music down” on Yeezy, it’s possible to turn it down in real life, as Ye noted about working with the venue. The exhibition space, a vacant building a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe, had previously been used by Raf Simons but needed to be negotiated without the help of a corporate giant.
Yeezy, for all his profile, is still something of a rudimentary gamer carving out a niche for himself in the world.
“Even the sound and music right now are not as loud as I would normally play my music,” Ye acknowledged backstage. “They didn’t give us anything, they didn’t give us anything, we had to fight tooth and nail. And that’s what happens when you become independent, you can’t rely on those big companies to deliver your vision. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
Ye sounded angry, triumphant, proud, and jovial at times.
How did you feel?
“I feel the same way,” he said. “At war.”
Source: news.google.com