It’s moments like this I wonder why I even feel the need to keep push notifications turned
on for Kanye West’s tweets. Why even set them up, TBH, when you’ve created such a strong #personalbrand that it compelsevery person you know to call/text/IM you as soon as Kanye starts stirring up a fashion tweetstorm? Wednesday (March 9) evening was one of these such moments as Yeezy settled in to his transatlantic flight home from Paris Fashion Week, cracked his knuckles, and began another one of his famous Twitter — for lack of a better word — “rants.”
Its kick-off was innocuous enough — just a little Twitter-style establishing shot — and then, Ye launched into what he really opened up the app to talk about: FASHION. I am what some might describe as a “superfan” (of both Kanye and fashion), so I was able to follow along, but for the otherwise uninitiated, allow me to break it down for you.
This is not the first time Kanye has used Twitter todispatch new fashion rules. If you’re setting fire to every suit jacket in your closet, you’re not alone. Knowing Kanye and the timing of this particular dispatch, this is a subtweet at a particular designer’s PFW collection. But whose?
The first guess would seem to be Hedi Slimane, the creative director of Saint Laurent with whom Ye had beef after Slimane attempted to bar Kanye from attending Paris Fashion Week shows other than his own Saint Laurent debut. The guess seems even more plausible given that a few of Slimane’s most recent SLP looks do put women in suit jackets.
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Ye channeled his anger with Slimane into the Yeezustrack “I Am A God” and a few dozen interviews and on-stage speeches throughout 2013 and 2014, but as of a2015 New York Times interview, he claimed to be “not angry anymore.”
In fact, it would seem the two might even be cool again since Ye is calling out Slimane copycats and has been spotted wearing his designs again.
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Make no mistake, Kanye still isn’t going to Slimane’s shows, though. That honor goes only to Kanye’s friends: Olivier Rousteing (creative director of Balmain), Riccardo Tisci (creative director of Givenchy), and Demna Gvasalia (creative director of Vetements and Balenciaga). But what about Virgil Abloh, creative director of Off-White and long-time friend of Kanye and DONDA collaborator? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a minute.
Olivier has been swagging Kim out in his designs for years now — he’s even included Mr. and Mrs. Kardashian-West in his ad campaigns — but designing an entire collection around Kim is a whole new level of dedication.
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Hopefully, “around” means some of these clothes were designed to her proportions as well as her aesthetic because that’d be pretty cool for size diversity. We’ll see.
Looking at the newest Vetements collection, I *thought* the colorway on these sweatshirts reminded me of Kanye’s The Life Of Pablo “I Feel Like Pablo” merch.
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I’m glad to have my suspicions confirmed by Kanye himself.
Whoa, mic drop. The stunt in this reveal seems to be: If you’re a fashion critic who was anti-Yeezy Season 1 but pro-Vetements and Gvasalia’s new post as CD of Balenciaga, you may be contradicting yourself.
OK. Hopefully this was just a scheduling conflict and not an excuse because I don’t know if I could handle Virgil and Kanye beefing and the presence of suit jackets (albeit deconstructed ones) in the newest Off-White offering is worrying.
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My heart tells me they’re cool, so I’m just going to listen to it.
Back to the suit jackets… It’s the big bread crumb Kanye wants you to pick up. Who else had suit jackets this season that Kanye used to be down with but didn’t name? Haider Ackermann?
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Ackermann had a few women’s suit jackets in his latest PFW collection, and not only have many of the suit jackets Kanye has worn recently been Ackermann designs, Ye repped Ackermann heeeeeeavily over the last few years and has attended shows in the past. But without an explanation from West himself, this is all conjecture.
Carine Roitfeld has been one of Kanye’s biggest champions in the fashion industry. The backstory here is that Carine was fired from her post as the editor-in-chief of French Vogue. There were several rumors about what scandal transpired to bring that about, but Carine has since built herself back up in the industry.
Whoever this is all about has apparently been duplicitous with Yeezy…
…AND just might be one of the subjects of “Real Friends.”
