Image via Complex Original
Kanye West, the man behind the democratization of the fashion world, recently sat down with New York Times Magazine to talk about everything from his ego to meeting Ralph Lauren at NYFW. Like anything Kanye does, when given the chance to speak his piece, you can bet there's going to be equal amounts of harsh criticism and inspirational #knowledgedarts. You can bet that there are some truly golden quotes from Yeezy himself, as he breaks down his feud with Hedi Slimane, his need to "shout" at the fashion execs who've ignored him, and how an expensive table is a metaphor for his often stubborn ego.
The biggest takeaway? Kanye really is trying to change the design world by combining the luxury clothes he loves, with the accessibility he's been trying to earn for himself since day one. Thus is the objective behind his Yeezy Season 1 collection after all.
Remember, we're living in a "post-Yeezy" world, and fashion isn't going to be the same. These are The Most Flagrant Fashion #KnowledgeDarts From Kanye West's "T Magazine" Profile.
On figuratively breaking through the pretentious fashion world:
“We destroyed the first village, the fashion village”
On establishing a Post-Yeezy style era:
“It’s literally like . . . I know this is really harsh, but it’s like Before Yeezy and After Yeezy,” West said. “This is the new Rome!”
On his “stream of consciousness” rants and recent public speaking engagements:
“They classify my motivational speeches as rants!”
On his ultimate apparel design objectives:
“[I want to build] the biggest apparel company in human history.”
On selling enough concert tees to buy an artificial mountain:
" ‘Look at this mountain I just made! You don’t think I can make a T-shirt?’ ” he told me. “ ’Look at everyone in the audience — we’re selling $300,000 worth of T-shirts every night!’ ”
On clothing and style as a means of class communication:
Before the Internet, music was really expensive. People would use a rack of CDs to show class, to show they had made it,” West said at one point. “Right now, people use clothes to telegraph that. I want to destroy that. The very thing that supposedly made me special — the jacket that no one could get, the direct communications with the designers — I want to give that to the world.”
On copping ill fire jawnz as “research:”
He claims that he’s not wearing luxury for luxury’s sake but rather as a form of research. “There’s a transition,” he says. “I need to partake in what’s of value and of quality and soul in order to understand it, in order to give it back.”
On the South Park alphets:
“That was the beginning of the sit-in,” he recalled, likening his quest for fashion-world access to an act of social justice.
On crying like a little bitch because he wanted his own store:
“I dreamed, since I was a little kid, of having my own store where I could curate every shoe, sweatshirt and color,” he said. “I have sketches of it. I cried over the idea of having my own store.”
On the controversial art/Hedi Slimane shot that almost became a single cover art:
A few moments later, he pulls up a potential cover image for a forthcoming single: It’s a photo of the Saint Laurent store in Chicago after it was robbed last year, its front window shattered, the logo fractured.
On trying to communicate with those in the fashion world who ignored and dismissed him:
“I one hundred percent had to scream…I tried it every other way.”
On his personal style:
“I want to dress like a child as much as possible”
On how Kim and North have changed his ego:
“I feel like now I have an amazing wife, a supersmart child and the opportunity to create in two major fields,” he said. “Before I had those outlets, my ego was all I had.”
On how an expensive table was a metaphor for his ego:
“I have this table in my new house,” West said, offering a parable. “They put this table in without asking. It was some weird nouveau riche marble table, and I hated it. But it was literally so heavy that it took a crane to move it. We would try to set up different things around it, but it never really worked.
“I realized that table was my ego. No matter what you put around it, under it, no matter who photographed it, the douchebaggery would always come through.”
On the lessons learned from his failed womenswear collection:
“I gained because I had the privilege to be educated,” he now says. “I had enough of a value to be able to go into debt, and that was a blessing. Some people don’t even have the opportunity to be able to go into debt.”
On his “obvious” design influences:
“I would like to be influenced as much as possible,” he said. “I don’t care if you can see the influence in something, as long as I made it better.”
On meeting Ralph Lauren:
In a widely circulated photo of the two men meeting, Lauren has placed his hand gently on West’s cheek. “Do you know what he said when he did that? ‘This is my son,’ ” West said. “And I was thinking, ‘I knew it! I knew Ralph was my daddy!’ ”
