There’s something about Ye that I can’t quit.
When an invite for a runway presentation at the Yeezy store in Los Angeles hit my inbox this week, my curiosity got the better of me. I booked a flight, harboring hope that Ye could still deliver something remarkable, as he did a decade ago, when a sea of models in Madison Square Garden stood in gummy sweats dyed burned pumpkin and washed-out parkas. They looked like “Dune” outcasts, arriving to us from some unknown future.
That hope was snuffed out not long after the single indelible note from Ye’s 2010 song “Runaway” rang out on Wednesday evening, announcing the start of his first show in four years.
Hundreds of guests — including the rappers Kid Cudi and 2 Chainz; the content creator N3on; Ye’s wife, Bianca Censori, in a nearly-unzipped jumpsuit; and a dusting of fashion journalists — then watched as a female model in an ankle-length black trench looped around a giant alabaster mound plopped at the center of the room.
The rapper formerly known as Kanye West had been seeking a reset. Though this was Ye’s 11th runway collection, the show was billed as Yeezy Season 01. Yet what he delivered was a rehash of military-rooted men’s wear and butt-flaunting briefs, tightly cinched coats and translucent body casings for women.
All his antecedent controversies aside, this show convinced me that Ye is no longer a vital voice in fashion.
There was a time when Ye had the Midas touch. (Or, perhaps, the muddy gray touch.) Anything he wore trickled down to a legion of clones in Balenciaga hoodies, greige sweatpants and surplus sneaker boots. The earthy color palette and spongy textures he started out with soon seeped into the wider streetwear market.
Brands knew the authority he had. It’s why Gap and Demna courted him, and why Adidas was willing to offer him a 15 percent royalty on net sales of his Yeezy sneakers.
But tastes have swung. More than a decade later, streetwear is no longer the dominant language of men’s wear. Saturated hoodies and bombers cropped just so don’t stir emotions (or draw our hands toward our credit cards) as they once did. The themes that still preoccupy Ye have long been metabolized by the rest of the fashion world.
In Paris in October 2022, Ye had seemingly self-immolated his design career. He appeared before the start of that runway show wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt to deliver a broadside against his critics. Days later, he swerved into antisemitic vitriol, posting that he was going to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”
Balenciaga and Gap cut ties. Vogue announced it wouldn’t work with him. And Adidas ended its lucrative collaboration.
In the past year, Ye has waged a comeback. He took out an ad in The Wall Street Journal apologizing for his antisemitic remarks, and in March he released “Bully,” his first album since the self-inflicted firestorm.
Ye has since played sold-out concerts in Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston, suggesting that fans want to move on, or at least hear “Flashing Lights” live. All the while, he has never abandoned his design aspirations. Through his own site, he continued to sell $20 slides and boxy T-shirts. (He also, as recently as last February, sold a swastika T-shirt.)
Before the fashion show on Wednesday night, I clocked Kid Cudi dressed in a three-piece gray suit. Framed against the other guests in their black leather jackets and hulking boots, Cudi’s Savile Row-inflected suit was radical. For a moment, I thought that Ye was about to deliver an entire collection of suits. Finally, I thought, he’s going to steer into some untested waters.
Instead, the men’s wear landed somewhere between Demna’s more austere creations at Balenciaga and the military garb captured in the book “Fashion Army.”
It also betrayed the touch of the Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy, who faced his own industry shunning after he was accused of asking underage men for explicit photos of themselves. (He has denied those allegations.) Rubchinskiy, who was appointed head of design for Yeezy in 2023, announced he left the brand last year but was backstage on Wednesday night.
Male models trooped past, often in packs, wearing glazed leather trousers, jackets with cargo pockets and, of course, calf-high sneaker boots. Their hands were shoved forward in their bombers, and their hoods were cinched tight around their heads.
In Yeezyland men treat clothes as an armor, but women were often left nearly bare. Any notion of fashion barely exists — they wear sheer body suits and hiked-up briefs intended to frame the body for maximum exposure.
But seeing that skin feels rote now. The show, which ran just about 15 minutes, wasn’t provocative and wasn’t inventive. It was just boring.
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