Meet the Woman Creating Some of the Pieces Featured in Bianca Censori’s Viral Outfits

UPDATED 3/25/24, 3:11 p.m. ET: A Yeezy rep has provided an official statement to Complex.

"Laura Beham is not in fact any kind of style advisor to Bianca Censori, who is wholly in the driving seat when it comes to her fashion choices, and she never has been. Beham is attempting to take credit for outfits she had zero involvement in choosing.

Laura Beham and Callum Pidgeon were fired from Yeezy as long ago as January 6, and have been around Ye and Bianca only sporadically since then, and not on payroll."

See original story below.

Bianca Censori is already a style icon.

No matter what she’s worn for the past year, people have had a lot to say. Some scoff at how revealing the sheer bodysuits are. Others have questioned how much control she actually has over her own wardrobe, insinuating Ye is dressing her up however he wants. According to designer Laura Beham, one half of the duo behind the Zurich-based brand Prototypes and creator of many of the nearly-nude looks, Censori is totally on board.

“She's very involved in the process. Bianca knows exactly what she would like to wear and it's us executing, realizing the vision,” Beham tells Complex. “Bianca wouldn't wear anything out on the street if she didn't want to do it. When people react negatively to it, I think they're just not ready for it. It’s shocking to people, but innovation is always shocking in the beginning.”

The looks are fairly simplistic. For most of them, Beham is reinterpreting some Wolford tights. They usually only take a few hours, sometimes minutes, to create. “Who wants to wait a month for a dress? Nobody. I think if you have an idea, you want to wear it immediately,” says Beham. Mowalola Ogunlesi also deserves credit for dressing Ye’s wife in some of her most talked-about outfits like see-through “WET” tank tops and revealing black leather bodysuits. But Beham’s upcycled sheer creations, which debuted in April 2023 when Censori attended Fear of God’s fashion show in Los Angeles, are what initially got a lot of people talking.

“A lot of people question or comment like, ‘Oh, she's basically naked, wearing no underwear.’ There are so many negative comments about the nudity part,” says Beham. “At the end of the day, she's fully covered, not naked.”

Beham and her business partner Callum Pidgeon operate their own brand, Prototypes. The line started in 2021 after both of them decided to step away from their jobs on the Vetements design team. They disagreed with the lack of sustainable practices in the luxury fashion industry, and decided they wanted to do something about it.

“There's so much stock out there from the past 100 years that’s just rotting,” says Beham. “We both don't see a point in making something new from scratch.”

Now, the duo reconstructs existing materials into brand new creations. The first pieces they ever made for Prototypes were a hoodie out of vintage sweatpants, a long sleeve by stitching together tank tops, and a dress by cutting three slits into an old table cloth. Sometimes they acquire old deadstock fabric rolls from warehouses and use them to create full collections. Other times, they take a miscellaneous assortment of items, like hundreds of old neckties, and transform them into suits and dresses. For Censori’s looks, that has meant turning sheer hosiery into bodysuits or printing Prototypes logos across translucent military ponchos from the ‘80s.

“It's all been done. It's all out there. There's a body with two arms and two legs. I think it's time to rethink the role of a designer,” says Beham. “Our responsibility for the new generation is to share knowledge and make it fun. It's just clothes. We're not like doing heart surgery or saving lives. At the end of the day, we're selling pens to people that already have 100 pens.”

Ye first discovered Prototypes on a random shopping trip in Los Angeles. He spotted some of the brand’s pieces on the rack at H.Lorenzo. He immediately reached out before he even left the store. Beham and Pidgeon flew from Zurich to Los Angeles shortly after. The group immediately clicked. Beham calls Yeezy “Disneyland for creatives.”

“Nothing is impossible. And it's not just clothing. There's food, and there's architecture, and there's music, and it's all happening in the same room at the same time,” says Beham. “Seeing him float through all of these departments within like minutes and being 100,000 percent in it, I was stunned. It's very special seeing someone working in that way and being part of it.”

Prototypes’ most recent collection actually featured a ton of repurposed items from the canceled Yeezy Gap line that was destined for destruction. A supplier they work with frequently acquired a large amount of old Yeezy Gap pieces and reached out to them. Ye and Bianca gave them the blessing to use it for Prototypes. When they unveiled their Series 06 lookbook, Ye posted every look on his Instagram story for his 20.3 million followers to see.

“They were so excited about it,” says Beham. “When we heard about the stock being sold to be off-shored and incinerated, Ye and Bianca loved the idea of Prototypes reworking and upcycling what Gap tried to get rid of. They decided to invest and save the stock from being wasted. Prototypes gave it a second life.”

When it comes to the looks Beham is crafting for Censori, don’t expect the internet criticism to subside. But Beham isn’t taking it to heart.

“There is always a platform for criticism or negativity,” says Beham. “But I think the most important part we all achieved with those looks is opening a conversation. Whether you hate it or love it, you have an opinion on it.”

Beham breaks down some of the looks she has created for Censori throughout the past 12 months, below.