Kanye “Ye” West’s “White Lives Matter” t-shirt at his Yeezy SZN9 show during Paris Fashion Week was wrong and has been labeled as such at length over the past few days by many in the media.
We don’t need yet another think piece on why what Kanye did is wrong, so we won’t go there.
But now that the event itself is ancient history – it did happen about a week ago, after all – this gives us the opportunity to ask a compelling question: why do those in the fashion industry keep forcing themselves to listen to what Kanye has to say? Why do we keep allowing him to suck up all of the attention in the room?
This “White Lives Matter” incident was a power play by Ye to show the fashion industry that he can take its precious design event, looked at by many as the premiere fashion week in the world, and turn it on his head – all while having industry professionals at his beck and call. That Yeezy SZN9 wasn’t even on the original Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2023 calendar is a dead giveaway that this was the intent. He figured that because he’s Kanye, a mega-celebrity with legions of fans and a net worth of over a billion dollars, he could drop his work in the middle of an already-planned fashion week and everyone would magically make time in their packed schedules to show up.
He ended up calculating this correctly. And he played those that showed up like a fiddle. Why, then, has fashion as an industry come to a point where it is willing to allow itself to be co-opted by this megalomaniacal star?
The truth is, fashion is not exactly a stranger to this dynamic of bowing down to Hollywood and the entertainment industry. In fact, fashion regularly engages with celebrity culture with the hope of keeping the attention of a public that at times finds it hard to concentrate on anything longer than a Tiktok video. It has been going on for a long time, and it is becoming a problem for reasons that Yeezy so aptly demonstrated to us on the runway in the City of Lights.
The fact that those in fashion asked ‘how high’ when Ye said to jump is yet another manifestation of what has happened to this industry as a result of prioritizing celebrity over actual talent.
How often is it, for example, that celebrities get ad campaigns that models would kill to have – just because design brands want to leverage the audience of the celebrity? How often is it that the press’s perception of a designer’s success in a given season is determined by who appears in their show’s front row? How often is it that celebrities are placed on the cover of fashion magazines instead of models?
And just how many more celebrity fashion lines and wannabe celebrity designers will we have to suffer through before we begin to respect the talent of those that are devoted, first and foremost, to the fashion industry?
We need to be nurturing the talent of smaller, more independent designers that could use the attention that the fashion industry continually sees fit to lavish on these celebrities that wake up one day and decide to dabble in fashion. These are the designers who make a career out of doing fashion design – but the industry can’t be bothered to give them the attention that they need.
As for Paris Fashion Week itself, there were many great showings to come out of it. Loewe, Noir Kei Ninomiya, and Rick Owens are a few that come to mind. So why did we allow Kanye to hijack the proceedings? Going strictly on design merits, it is not as if his work for Yeezy SZN9 was the most interesting thing that one has ever seen. Far from it; the work resembled a mediocre art school project. Though he has created a few individual fashion pieces over the course of his fashion career that stand in the same realm as those of a good fashion designer, his collections have never had a strong overall point of view.
But yet, he has continued to garner partnerships with companies such as Gap, Balenciaga, and Adidas. Some of his many fashion collaborations have fallen apart, and some might be headed in that direction (in the case of Adidas). He continues to have the attention of those in the industry, and why not? He has money and gets attention, and that is all that you need these days to draw in fashion’s powers that be. Is it any wonder that fashion industry insiders were hoodwinked by the ultimate in egotistical celebrities?
And now those insiders are angry, as they should be. Perhaps this will be the last time that they give Kanye West a chance, and I truly hope that is the case. But with fashion’s track record of worshipping at the altar of celebrity culture, how can we be sure of that?
Besides, Ye is a “creative genius”, so there’s that.
We already have our own creative geniuses in fashion; we don’t need him.
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