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Tonight at a Parisian location that would be irresponsible to share, Kanye West — or Ye, as he now prefers — will present his eleventh fashion show, an event that came together away from the official Paris Fashion Week calendar. It will be his ninth collection for Yeezy (which, as of now, is formally named YZY) and his fourth-ever show in Paris.
Seven of the eight previous YZY shows were in New York. Why Paris now? “Paris is the high cathedral of fashion. If I’m doing music, rap music, I’m going to put my hoodie on, and get an Uber, and go over to Future’s house. Day after day. And if we’re working on clothes? Paris.”
He held two pre-YZY shows in Paris under his own name in 2011 and 2012. His most recent show here (as a designer, not guest or model) was immediately before the pandemic at the front of 2020.
We meet on Sunday, the night before the show, at his venue. Ye grabs a bowl of salmon salad from the buffet and leads me, along with his daughter North and his just-appointed show PR rep Lucien Pagès, to a corner away from the focused uproar of preparation. It was a busy day for Ye. He opened Balenciaga for Demna, a designer he calls “the master cutter”, who, until very recently, partnered with him on an ill-fated collaboration for Gap. Later, he sat at Givenchy to show support for Matthew Williams, who worked in design on Pastelle (Ye’s first-ever label) and later served as art director at Donda, West’s creative agency.
Shortly before 6pm, he returned to the show venue to check up on a YZY collection that he oversaw and was designed in consultation with Shayne Oliver. As I wait, I chat with Michèle Lamy and Christine Centenera, the stylist who has been the one constant at all 11 Ye shows. “He’s building a world,” says Centenera as she nips out to get some flats for the long night ahead.
We sit. Chewing ruminatively, Ye delivers the first of many delicious lines. “You know, specifically in this fashion context, I see myself more as a George Lucas than a fashion designer. I work with true, true, true fashion designers. Like Shayne, like Demna, like Riccardo Tisci… My main job is to be a producer, in a Quincy Jones sense. Who takes a symphony of ideas and then plays a song.”
Asked to share the concept of the collection we will see later, he says: “There’s just people. From the same planet. And sometimes, in high school, it feels like we don’t fit in. And in a situation like this, we have the opportunity to come together to express who we are.” It aligns with his career as an artist: Ye’s first three studio albums were The College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation.
Ye is thinking as he talks, putting it together, producing. I postulate a synthesis: “So a uniting force for people who might be considered unconventional as they are developing, but for whom unconventionality is actually the superpower?” He replies: “I like the way you put it.” So how does that — an anti-uniform for the anti-conventional — translate into clothing? “It’s leaning into the shape of how I see this future world… this alternate world. But in high school. It’s focused on curriculum because both my parents are educators.”
In our chat, we cover various stages of Ye’s integration — not always (if ever) seamless — into Paris’s fashion world. It began in 2009 when he famously arrived on the scene with Virgil Abloh, Don C, Taz Arnold, Chris Julian and Fonzworth Bentley. Tommy Ton got the shot. It was the beginning of a paradigm shift for the industry. Says Ye: “We loved it. We love it. We had our idea and our new attitude. And the world agreed with us: it was like the invention of rock ‘n’ roll: it was a new genre.” He adds: “We fought so hard.”
Ye sees his history and future in the fashion business as a three-chord progression. The first was that moment of insertion, back in 2009. “We fought to get the credit from the fashion guard and elites.” The second was when he and the many other talents he helped seed — crucially Abloh, but others too — started delivering. “We fought to get the audience and give them the product.” And the third? “To clean up the companies.”
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Ye is just emerging from a much-publicised break-up with Gap and Adidas. He is unhappy with how those relationships developed and remains regretful that he could not fulfil what he sees as his mission with his partners. He says: “Our point, our idea, is that there is no one who is not welcome at YZY, at Donda. And that’s why I went to Gap. And why I brought Demna with me. To say ‘OK, Demna’s cut is at the top of what Paris has to offer. And Paris is at the top of what fashion has to offer. So let’s bring Paris to the people.’” But it didn’t work out? “No. They made the T-shirts we had done cost $200. And then, they took our colour palette and made a shape that was appropriate to what I think someone in the office thought was at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And I felt that was civil rights.”
What does he mean? “Well, when we went to shows — and you were just talking about that old Tommy Ton photo — there were certain shows we couldn’t get into. That relates to the civil rights movement. It shouldn’t be that you can’t have this fabric or have this cut until you’ve made it to a certain place or class in life. It’s about dignity. And democracy.”
He indicates that he now plans to run YZY as a vertically integrated business. “We just bought our fourth factory in California,” he says. He adds that he would consider buying today’s show venue as the future Paris HQ of YZY, were the deal to make sense. “From what I know about Armani, this feels like Armani,” he says — and in terms of potential disruption, the analogy seems potentially to apply.
YZY, now in stage 3, the state of independence, is part of a broader campaign for Ye. He is opening a vocational school, the Donda Academy, in Chatsworth, Los Angeles and also plans a series of refuges — what he calls “Dondasteries” — as safe spaces for those in need. Of the school, and its cousin sites to come, he says: “The most important resource we can have is knowledge. Because with knowledge we can go and get food. So when we talk about the Donda school, we’re creating high-end educational but also vocational [skills], which are things we forgot about; like how to sew, how to cook, how to farm, carpentry. Basic physical needs. We’re starting in Chatsworth, and we have land in Wyoming, and Young Thug offered us land in Atlanta, so we’re going to put one there. We’re going to roll it out.”
He says these initiatives are part of an effort to mobilise in support of what he feels is the right side of “the spiritual warfare” in society today. When I offer that Bob Dylan used “spiritual warfare” as a lyric in his 1979-vintage crusading religious call to moral arms, Precious Angel, Ye leans in. “I really want to work with Bob Dylan and write with him. My favourite song of all time is All Along The Watchtower.”
Ye has a show to prep, and his salad is long finished. So I hit him with one last question. Back in 2008, along with Abloh, he interned at Fendi in Rome. Then-CEO Michael Burke paid them $500 a month, years before he moved to Louis Vuitton and appointed Abloh as menswear designer. Would Ye ever consider working for a house? Abloh’s role at Louis Vuitton has not yet been filled.
Ye sits back: “Yeah… even George Lucas had issues with Disney. And now we’re here, and YZY is established on its own.” That sounds like a no. Today’s show, however, will surely be a key moment of the season. Ye describes it, and his wider mission, as a “formu-love”. North stands up, and her dad takes the cue: it’s time to get back to work.