A lot of people have shared their opinions on Kanye West's entry into the world of fashion, from other designers like Jeremy Scott and Olivier Rousteing, to NYFW founder Fern Mallis and an Uber driver. Now that people have had a chance to really digest his adidas "Yeezy Season 1" collection with the release of the print version of the Kanye West x adidas "Season" zine, style blog WhoWhatWear.com spoke with a panel of five major critics to get their opinions on Kanye's "aspirations" in the fashion industry.
The panel includes Robin Givhan, fashion critic for The Washington Post, Eric Wilson, fashion news director for Instyle, the New York Times' fashion director and chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, Alexandra Jacobs, who is also a fashion critic for the New York Times, and Lynn Yaeger, contributing fashion editor and critic for Vogue. Each of the critics agreed that Kanye's interest in fashion is genuine and that he is a welcome addition to the industry.
"I think Kanye West is really brave," said Friedman, "because he comes in for so much criticism, and he gets knocked down so many times by the fashion world—maybe not by designers but by the ‘protectors’ of the fashion world—and he gets right back up." Givhan said that she admires that he is "willing to go through the uncomfortable process of attempting to learn about a new business under [such a] spotlight," but added that his wife Kim Kardashian's motivation seems to be "all about marketing."
"The fashion industry is lucky to have him interested," said Alexandra Jacobs. "every show he attends swivels more eyeballs to their brands...I don't see any reason why Kanye couldn't do as well as the Olsen Twins, who, let's remember, had a line at Wal-Mart before starting The Row."
Head over to WhoWhatWear.com to read more about what the critics had to say about Kanye.
[via WhoWhatWear]
