Medium MODA: Yeezy Season 3
Closely Knit Crew
This season, (whether it wants to or not) “fashion” is being forced to answer some pretty tough questions: How fast is too fast (pretty soon we will be able to buy clothes before they are presented on runways), what does real “diversity” look like in an industry inherently celebratory of performed wealth and exclusivity (is it just about models of color, or do those ivory-tower-dwelling power-brokers have to shift in order for real and lasting change to be initiated?), and most intriguingly, who and what is a “designer” (it is this writer’s belief that an apparel designer must either sketch, drape, pattern-make, sew—or do all four: the equivalent of gaining entrance to the apparel-making EGOT society—or utilize a term like stylist, or editor (just as respectable, but certainly more accurate) for purposes of professional identification). No easy answers here. To this end, who and what (professionally, creatively, and politically) is Kanye West these days?
Is he the ultimate glam-Dad celebri-Papi, elevating the aesthetic of his hyper-hi-visibility wife/children/in-laws and in turn that of the entire American and global media-consuming community? One can’t ignore Mr. West’s upgrading of the Kardashian clan’s visual “brand”, and by proxy his influence on the way so many around the world aspire to look, live, and be. Is he a musical “town crier” sent to set our most divisive political discussions to club-thumping beats—moving the convo forward while moving dem asses at the club? Is he an alta-moda enfant terrible, simultaneously ostracized, embraced and exploited by a racially stratified industry in much the same way Jean Michel Basquiat claimed to have been treated by the art establishment? No easy answers here either. Certainly no definitive ones to be found amid the collection of apparel Mr. West presented this evening at Madison Square Garden in conjunction with the release of his new album The Life of Pablo (formely Waves).
There was a lazer-sharp focus in the music released by West tonight: here he is home. The rapper effortlessly engaged this moment’s omnipresent trap-fascination with ratchet-rhyme (no small feat in an genre insistent on assigning some of its greatest icons disturbingly premature expiration dates). More daringly he offered a track that payed homage to his Chicago roots with stirring samples of Barbara Tucker’s I Get Lifted and Deep Inside.
But the focus and authentic investment West effortlessly conveys in his music, continued to elude him within the apparel space. This is not to say that the style and “fly” of his persona weren’t present in the togs: the collection’s explorations of vintage army-surplus gear were right in-step with the increasingly militaristic environments and contexts many Americans and citizens of the world increasingly walk through and live within. Thematically, there’s something there! But it seemed to be going under-addressed by Mr. West tonight (as it has in previous presentations of the assortment during which he has less than compellingly offered motivations behind his design work). Tonight he bellowed to the audience, “tell me how y’all feel about the clothes this season.” Of course this was not a forum in which attendees would be offering up rigorous critiques of silhoutte, fabric selection, or color-story. So—in a most telling of moments—amid the requisite audience applause, West moved on to acknowledging collaborators like performance-artist Vanessa Beecroft (to whom the West’s presentation owe much of the composition and visual language), and Olivier Rousteing (Creative Director Parisian brand Balmain, with whom West apparently worked on conceiving the outsized faux-furs sported by His wife and her clan this evening). After he shouted-out Carine Roitfeld (or has he referred to her upon deeming her a “Bad Bitch”, “Carine Ronfield”) and shared that he chatted with “Anna” recently about his aspirations to helm Hermes someday, it became glaringly apparent that for Mr. West perhaps being “in fashion” and a member of this exclusive “crew” remains more important that the “fashion” itself that he is creating.
This season, it adopted Carhart workwear and geo-linear knitwear as points of departure, in addition to continuing previous season’s “athleisure”-informed layered lycra foundation-garment concepts. Those must-have, artfully moth-chewed sweaters were present and accounted for, surely bound to fly off of shelves and onto backs around the globe come fall. Too bad West has yet to ever thoroughly articulate any of this himself: It is as though he was present, adoringly observing as the collection was being created, but dared not get too involved for fear that he’d just gunk it up with his naivetee. This is by no means a crime, but by all accounts not an accomplishment either.
It means that West has a ways to go before he is heralded as the design genius he aspires to be: at this point he’s thoroughly conquered the game of “Who does he know?” (in my imagination, he’s gathered Ricardo Tisci, Phoebe Philo, and the aforementioned Vanessa, Olivier, and “Anna” into a gossipy group-chat in which they talk-smack about the lesser designers and collections that don’t get plumb editorial coverage and/or bought by influential retailers). Next up, in order to prove once and for all that he might more consistently be considered a “designer” he will have to conquer the technically precarious game of “What does he know?”. That game unforgivingly remains no team-sport. -Kibwe Chase-Marshall
