{"id":19590,"date":"2015-02-16T11:17:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T10:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=19590"},"modified":"2015-02-16T11:17:31","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T10:17:31","slug":"kanye-west-elitism-fashion-industry-adidas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/kanye-west-elitism-fashion-industry-adidas\/","title":{"rendered":"Warum hat es so lange gedauert, bis die Modeindustrie Kanye West angenommen hat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feat\" Kanye West x Adidas. Photo by Alessandro Garofalo<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here to crack the pavement and make new ground, sonically and in society, culturally,\u201d narrated Kanye West in a pre-recorded announcement that played at the New York Fashion Week debut of his Kanye West x adidas Originals collection last Thursday. As he revealed his work, he proclaimed his ambition to transcend boundaries and move freely between various creative fields. \u201cI want people to think more,\u201d he continued. \u201cI want people to feel like it\u2019s okay to create and follow what their dreams are and not feel boxed in.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Anna Wintour, Beyonce, Jay Z, West\u2019s wife, Kim Kardashian, and their daughter, North, watched from an audience of influencers and celebrities, it seemed as if West had finally crossed over from rap provocateur to interdisciplinary artist. The collection was certainly a triumph for him as a designer, but the fashion world\u2019s reluctance to embrace him is indicative of the conservatism of the industry\u2019s old guard.<\/p>\n

The creative presentation of \u201cYEEZY SEASON 1,\u201d as the collection is titled, illustrated West\u2019s call for innovation. He discarded the traditional catwalk format and presented the show as a performance in collaboration with artist Vanessa Beecroft. Models of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities stood in rows. Each time a single note sounded, a new row would step forward to showcase West\u2019s sheer bodysuits, oversized parkas, tattered knits, and, of course, the Yeezy 750 Boost, a boot-hightop hybrid that sneakerheads have been salivating over since West wore them during his Grammys performance on 8 February.<\/p>\n

\"_AG19015\" Kanye West x Adidas. Photo by Alessandro Garofalo<\/p>\n

The versatile, streetwise collection and its fresh presentation felt like a major win for West, who has long expressed his frustration with the fashion world\u2019s dismissal of his efforts to become a designer. Despite his successful music career, money and influence, he has stated in countless interviews that labels and investors alike thought he had no business branching out into other disciplines. “I’m so frustrated,” he told BBC Radio 1\u2019s Zane Lowe in September 2013. “I’ve got ideas on colour palettes, I’ve got ideas on silhouettes. I’ve got a million people telling me why I can’t do it, that I’m not a real designer.”<\/p>\n

While celebrities starring in ad campaigns and musicians peddling band t-shirts seems acceptable to the industry\u2019s gatekeepers, West has said, many of the companies he turned to couldn\u2019t imagine a rapper designing the actual clothes, not just using his image to sell a brand. Following the release of his last album, “Yeezus”, he grew more vehement in interviews, sometimes even volatile. \u201cYou ain\u2019t got the answers, Sway\u201d became a meme<\/a>. Every time he spoke publicly, blogs would dismiss his criticism of these limitations as the latest #KanyeRant.<\/p>\n

\"Kanye Kanye West x Adidas. Photo by Alessandro Garofalo<\/p>\n

While West\u2019s impact on pop culture and style are undeniable, there\u2019s something about an artist calling himself great that people can\u2019t stomach \u2014 especially a black artist who refuses to wait for approval from the largely white fashion establishment. After all, the number of black designers represented at fashion week can easily be counted on one hand. Factor in the disproportionately white corporate executives, fashion journalists, and even models, and you\u2019ll see that the fashion industry isn\u2019t exactly inclusive (which, as\u00a0diese <\/a>New York Times<\/i><\/a> article<\/a> eloquently explains, is a product of an interconnected web of socioeconomic factors, starting with the fact that art classes are frequently cut from US public schools in lower-income communities of colour). Underneath his public outbursts and grandiose proclamations that he\u2019s the next Michelangelo, Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, West has expressed a warranted anger at the fact that people expect him to follow a stereotypical trajectory of what they believe a black artist can accomplish in the 21st century.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you get really successful at one thing, you start to grow and feel like you can do more things and your shoe starts to get a little bit tight and you do everything you can to get a bigger shoe so you can walk further and run faster,\u201d said West in a 2014 interview with Seth Meyers. \u201cAnd now people are like, \u2018No, Kanye, you can\u2019t run faster, this is the limit that was made. These are the walls that Michael Jackson broke down for you and Jay Z and Russell Simmons broke down for you.\u2019 I\u2019m in the process of breaking down walls so people will understand 10 years from now, 20 years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past several years, West weathered the backlash and his perseverance seems to have paid off. Since his and Kim Kardashian\u2019s April 2014 “Vogue” cover and their joint Balmain ad campaign, the fashion world has warmed up to the couple. Even the notoriously hard-to-please Anna Wintour is now a close family friend. While his Spring 2012 Kanye West collection wasn\u2019t terribly well-received, thanks to a delicate balance of a more refined aesthetic, unique presentation, and the right publicity, the internet hasn\u2019t stopped talking about Kanye West x adidas Originals since last Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"_AG19193\" Kanye West x Adidas. Photo by Alessandro Garofalo<\/p>\n

It seems that West has succeeded at proving his detractors wrong, at least for the time being. His latest collection has given us forward-thinking basics that could be worn to the office, the gym, and the club \u2014 clothes that, as his runway presentation demonstrated, work with a wide variety of body types, skin tones, and personal styles. True to his genre-defying sensibilities, the show gave a glimpse of how music and fashion could become much more intertwined than just designers with pop star muses. As the models posed, West\u2019s new song \u201cWolves\u201d featuring Sia and Vic Mensa played, whetting the audience\u2019s appetite for his next album. One of West\u2019s strongest skills, it turns out, is his ability to think beyond medium or genre to create a cohesive audio-visual experience that can be appreciated on an artistic level and simultaneously consumed as a product.<\/p>\n

Now that West has stormed the fashion world\u2019s ivory tower, he isn\u2019t locking himself inside with the one percent. In an interview with Ryan Seacrest last week, he said that he wants to make sure adidas makes enough Yeezy Boosts so that everyone who wants them can have them (and at $350 a pair, the price point is pretty reasonable compared to other Fashion Week offerings). His next project? In true populist fashion, he mentioned that he wants to create high school uniforms to give his young fans more sartorial options. If his opening speech at New York Fashion Week was any indication, West is fascinated with fashion as a democratizing platform and views design as a way to improve the world. It\u2019s early to say for certain, but he has already posited himself to change the fashion industry\u2019s relationship to pop culture and its consumers for years to come.<\/p>\n