Kanye “Ye” West and Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia, who has long wanted to be called only by his first name, along with Ye, are ‘divorcing’.
Just a few weeks ago, Ye opened the fashion house’s ‘Spring/Summer 2023 Show’ at Paris Fashion Week, and Balenciaga has now officially declared the creative partnership with Kanye West over to the US industry magazine WWD. Balenciaga no longer has any relationship with the artist and is not planning any future projects with him, Balenciaga’s mother Kering told WWD.
For a while now, Ye has been making headlines mostly negative, chasing one controversy after another and most recently shocking with a “White Lives Matter” slogan T-shirt at an impromptu presentation of its ninth Yeezy collection in Paris. Ye dismissed any criticism of the t-shirt, the label of which is often associated with racist propaganda, going even further and publicly attacking those who dared to criticize him on his Instagram and Twitter. He stopped at nothing and nobody and finally broke out in anti-Semitic tirades that, like the controversial T-shirt, had consequences.
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After Adidas, Twitter and Instagram, Balenciaga is now also reacting
The fact that Ye provokes bizarre messages on various social media channels is nothing new. However, it seems the 45-year-old – who says he has been suffering from mental health problems and bipolar disorder for years – will not get away with his irrational, sometimes dangerous behavior this time. Adidas announced earlier this month that it was reviewing its collaboration with Yeezy, and West’s preferred outlets, Instagram and Twitter, are said to have restricted the designer’s access to their respective platforms. Meanwhile, former West advocates and industry friends openly speak out against him, including Tremaine Emory, creative director at Supreme and former West collaborator, and supermodel Gigi Hadid.
Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga is disappearing from the shelves
Balenciaga and creative director Demna have been cautious to this day, but the first signs of the end of the partnership have already been spotted. For example, if you look for a photo of Kanye West as a Balenciaga model on the Balenciaga website or on Vogue Runway, you will no longer find it there. The opening look of the Balenciaga Show has apparently been removed from the gallery of both portals. However, it’s not clear whether Vogue’s decision was at the company’s request, or as a show of solidarity with Vogue’s Global Fashion Editor at Large Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who was targeted by West’s tirades. The disappearance of the “Yeezy Gap engineered by Balenciaga” collection, for which a store in Times Square in New York was redesigned just a few months ago, from the range of leading online retailers such as Farfetch and Mytheresa already made a mark. It seems the collection is currently only available on the Yeezy Gap website and resale sites.
The end of a creative alliance
Kanye West and Demna Gvasalia’s creative romance began years ago, when Ye was one of the first public fans of Vetements, the designer’s brand founded in 2014, before hiring him as a consultant for his first Yeezy show. Since then, the two have worked together countless times and seemed inseparable.
Vanessa Friedman, the fashion director and chief critic of the US newspaper The New York Times, recently wondered whether Balenciaga and Demna could and want to tear themselves away from Ye at all. After all, there is a lot at stake for Balenciaga and parent company Kering, and a public mud fight with Kanye West could also have serious consequences for the group. Not only in the event that Ye decide, as so often, to make private conversations public, because the designing musician does not stop at largely unfounded accusations. Just recently, he berated LVMH boss Bernard Arnault on Instagram and blamed him and the company for the death of Virgil Abloh, before complaining about how LVMH chairman Sidney Toledano was with Givenchy designer Matthew Williams before his show spoke.
Apparently Balenciaga is willing to take that risk. How exactly Demna Gvasalia stands by this decision is unclear.
Balenciaga and Kering have not yet responded to a request from FashionUnited.