In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo admitted that it's "tough" to maintain a working relationship with Kanye West.
Ye was an early supporter of Fear of God and has been spotted wearing some of Lorenzo's designs throughout the years. However, Lorenzo said that he stopped working with him in 2016. Ye was seen in attendance at Fear of God's first-ever fashion show at the Hollywood Bowl earlier this year, but Lorenzo said he hadn't spoken to Ye in over a year when he showed up. "Anyone that knows Kanye will tell you it's a tough relationship to hold on to," said Lorenzo.
Despite Ye's embrace of antisemitism, including an infamous interview with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in which he praised Adolf Hitler, Lorenzo has seemingly voiced his support for the disgraced multi-hyphenate. Assumedly, he's suggesting that it's "tough" not because of Ye's politics, but because of his elusive nature. Adidas, among countless others, publicly distanced itself from Ye in light of his far-right turn, though, which had been getting increasingly worse ever since he publicly endorsed Donald Trump in 2016.
In a since-deleted post on Instagram earlier this year, Lorenzo wrote, "VIRG... paris ain't the same without you," about the late Virgil Abloh, per Highsnobiety. "Ye... adi ain't the same without you. Miss my dudes." Lorenzo hasn't spoken about Ye's much-publicized controversies, but he assumedly still supports him—regardless of whether he agrees with him—because the Fear of God show this year featured the use of Ye and Kid Cudi's Kids See Ghosts song "Feel the Love."
In 2021, Lorenzo sat down for an interview with Kerwin Frost and opened up about meeting with Ye for the first time. “I got a random call from Virgil like ‘Yo, can you be in Atlantic City tomorrow?’” Lorenzo said. “I was like, ‘Uhhh’ and he was like, ‘Ye wants to see this Fear of God collection that you did.” When he arrived, he showed West the collection he was working on and explained the vision behind it.
“But before I could get through explaining everything, he’s holding up this t-shirt and he’s like, ‘Man, I can see all the thought that went into this’ and it was at that moment that I knew that we saw things the same way,” he said. “And I felt that from looking at him from afar, obviously, but then when we connected personally I was like, yeah, we kinda see things the same way.”
Read the full Wall Street Journal interview here.
