PARIS — Yeezy is dead. Long live YZY. The third stage in Ye — the artist formerly known as Kanye West — is to dress up the world.
Perhaps it was a takeaway from a surprise Paris Fashion Week show held unscheduled in an empty office tower just below the Arc de Triomphe.
It was nominally just a fashion show, kind of like “The YZY Experience,” shadowing clothes on the runway.
The rumors started over the weekend just a day or so before Balenciaga’s Mad Show. You were in Paris to stage a fashion show, just over two weeks after ending your tumultuous partnership with Gap.
Maybe it will be Monday? Maybe not; Ye had just fired her PR agency. wait, that was happening. He found another agency. Then on Sunday night, a digital invitation arrived. for the next night. Guests were asked not to share addresses.
At 5:45 pm on Monday, the Avenue de la Grande Arme was buzzing with cheering fans and photographers. Here’s the secret. They outnumbered the actual attendees of the show by like 100 to 1.
And yet, here comes Anna Wintour. So did John Galliano. Balenciaga designer Demna and CEO Cedric Charbi. Alexandre Arnault, Chief Marketing Officer of Tiffany & Co. and son of Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH. Then they all sat down, played with soap-on ropes that looked like three blocks of granite, placed on every seat, and waited an hour and a half for the show to start. She left before it was over because she had other commitments, Winter said.)
This week is a good reflection of how fashion and entertainment culture and power structures have changed over the past decade. Eleven years ago, in early October 2011, Ye held her first fashion show in Paris.
The line at the time was called “Kanye West.”With an emphasis on sumptuous ruffles — leather and fur and gold hardware — it was widespread dismissed by audienceBut this time they were there, a force in the industry, and at the last minute jumped to see what Ye had to offer.
This included a live choir featuring many children from Yeh’s new Donda Academy in California and his daughter North, which critics complained about the delay of his show. It started with a rambling speech about his former manager, Scooter Braun. his hospitalization (Ye has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder); pain called “crazy”; Critics complained that his clothes may not be well made. Those in the gap who couldn’t understand his vision. Bernard Arnault, whom he called “his new Drake.” And the news that he’s about to found yet another version of his own fashion house, and it’s started now.
“We’ve changed the look of fashion in the last decade. We’re the streets. We’re the culture.” I know.”
This leader features an oversized image with a picture of Pope John Paul II and the words “Seguiremos tu ejemplo” (“We follow your example”) on the front and the words “White Lives Matter” on the back. I was wearing a shirt fromof Anti-Defamation League called hate speech and has been attributed to white supremacists (including the Ku Klux Klan), who began using it in 2015 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
As he spoke, an image of Ye projected onto the four-story wall behind him, making it impossible to miss the shirt.
Besides, conservative commentator Candice Owens was in the audience, can also wearAfter that, the shirt appeared as part of the collection, Selah MarleyDaughter of Lauryn Hill and granddaughter of Bob Marley. (Givenchy designer Matthew M. Williams, who worked with Mr. West early in his career, Rick Owen’s wife, Michelle Lamy, and Naomi Campbell, were also on the show.)
This was the only message garment in the line called SZN9 in reference to a previously held Yeezy show, co-created with Shayne Oliver, former designer of Hood By Air (of talent). It stood out even more in a show that focused on garments that could simply be pulled over the body without the use of hardware such as buttons, zippers or snaps. gap.
As it happens, a lot of this line looked like that line. In particular, the show’s opening full-body catsuit, duvet-like poncho, blouson his jacket, GI Joe’s torso-filled triangle of sorts on steroids, lack of seams, and semi-apocalyptic palette. To.
It has potential, but Import was overwhelmed by the shirt, what it stood for, and its endorsement by figures like Leaf, even those with a track record of wearing MAGA hats. play with the image of the confederates — may be used as a rallying cry by those who have already bought into the message.
Vogue editor Gabriela Kalefa Johnson wrote: InstagramHe later added, “There is no excuse. There is no art here.”Jaden Smith in the audience went outSo did Dazed writer and editor Lynette Nylander.
The next day, at a Chanel show, Edward Enninful, the editor of British Vogue and the most influential black man in the fashion media, called the shirt “inappropriate” and “insensitive given the state of the world.” I called.
Mr. Nylander Posted“It doesn’t matter what the intention was…it’s perception to the masses out of context.”
Indeed, it was the shirt out of context that ultimately made the news, including the theory about Ye’s dress and the promise that Mr. Arnault would set him up in his own home, then scrapped, and now Ye (an LVMH rep said Arnault had “no comment”); It’s not even Ye’s claim that he felt ‘at war’. If so, this was a grenade that backfired.
Behind the scenes, Ye refused to provide a theoretical framework as to why he did it. “It says it all,” he said of the shirt. But what exactly does it say?
Does he really believe he can properly use the language of racial violence with irony? A world he envisions where one day the black and white power structure will be reversed and this collection is the future? That you get a kick out of pushing everyone’s buttons? He wants to see how far he can go, and doesn’t really care or think about the collateral damage (including children singing at his feet) in the meantime.
Or, as he said in his speech, “You can’t control me. This is an out-of-hand situation.”