You know that figure of speech that says "to call a spade a spade"? Well, in the fashion industry it doesn't exist. Or, rather, this expression doesn't exist to describe fashion collections or products linked to fashion houses and celebrities (supported by key editors and other assorted powerful media figures) that may be translated as advertisers' money. To avoid saying the truth about these designs, you usually employ elaborate euphemisms and metaphors, and you publish hundreds of images and videos that help you making sure you do not express your objective opinion, since, after all, life is too short to lose money and risk your job. This action has usually got two main global consequences - you impose on consumers crap products and you stress the planet by manufacturing more questionable clothes and accessories. This is more or less what happened with Kanye West's "Yeezy Season 1" collection for Adidas Originals.
Having convinced himself he is a designer after his catastrophic women's wear presentation in October 2011 in Paris and a collaboration with APC in 2013, Kanye West showcased during New York Fashion Week what could only be described as a risible men's and women's collection (because that's what it would be if his name weren't attached to it).
Staged with the help of performance artist Vanessa Beecroft (but next time make it Marina Abramović, just to take it all to the next level of arty and fashionable coolness...), the collection featured around 50 models of all shapes and sizes in a military formation.
Most of them were clad in layered flesh-tone (yes, agree, very Beecroft) body stockings (of the kind you make by yourself by cutting a pair of tights in strategic places) matched with a series of horridly unfitting sports bras/see-through crop tops that squashed the models' breasts in all the wrong places, baggy sweatpants and shirts or garments resembling bulletproof vests; camouflage or bomber jackets; shearling coats, and military sweaters in tatters. Accessories included oversized bags (copied from luxury accessory brands) and backpacks and the key pieces - sneakers and boots (also in their high-heeled version). So fashion, wow much edginess, the Dogecoin dog may say.
The, erm, good news is that - according to Kanye West - everything will be on sale because we all need a jumper falling into bits and pieces and all the professional dancers out there who usually make their own warm up tops by cutting out old woollen tights will definitely be queuing up outside Adidas stores.
It would have been honest to describe this mess not as "sportswear", but as apocalyptically miserable clothes for all those celebrities who often leave their houses without getting dressed (let Kim Kardashian do so anytime she needs to attract the paparazzi, but avoid imposing this stuff on innocent consumers...), but most critics avoided doing so preferring to highlight how the rapper and designer is all focused on helping people and society.
At the beginning of the show Kanye West played indeed a track in which he told his audience disconnectedly deranged sentences such as: "I want to create something better for you...We have been limited...It's bigger than who I am even in my present living...It's about when I was on earth what did I do to help (…) There's a lack of creativity in every field cos people are afraid..." What's worse, though, is that West has stated in some interviews with the media that he has created "the world's first solutions-based clothing line", with a special aim "absolve consumers of dressing's daily stress by creating a line of high-quality essentials that can be freely combined in infinite ways".
He must be completely removed from society since he doesn't seem to be aware of the fact that garments and accessories can in general be combined in infinite ways; that this trash will be produced exploiting the usual countries where cheap stuff is manufactured, so we won't be in the presence of high quality; and, that, last but not least, if you want to buy essentials and you can afford high quality, you buy cashmere sportswear; otherwise you do what most ordinary mortals do and turn to your average high street retailer for cheap, practical and functional stuff.
So while the only person who expressed dissent to all this mess - funnily enough in the style of the child in Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes - was 18 month old North West who cried out and threw tantrums at selected fashion shows, from her father's (though in this case the tantrums may have been caused by the mini bullet proof vest she was wearing...) to Alexander Wang's (though she may have done so also because she was sitting in the presence of the forces of evil as incarnated by US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour right next to her...), the best way to describe this collection is with two words "offensively infuriating".
Apparently it took West 18 months to develop it, even though the seeds of the collection came from the 2011 London riots (that - he has probably forgotten - were driven by an eclectic mix of causes, including boredom, poverty, deprivation and frustration). Students at fashion colleges have got to produce more serious and sensible collections in just a few weeks; they have to justify them to their lecturers and tutors and make sure they come up with a clever presentation to attract the possibility of getting not even a job, but an unpaid internship at a fashion house, where, chances are, they will be exploited for menial tasks.
In a nutshell, there are talented young people out there who will never be given any chance in this industry because they are not vapid celebrities claiming they care for society though all they do is stealing the looks of disenfranchised youth and using them to recreate their own army of sporty people.
This is the main reason why I find this collection offensive and infuriating and why the fashion industry is in desperate need of two things: honesty and integrity (come on, Adidas, this is trash, at least Yamamoto's Y3 line still includes proper clothes and accessories...) and a figure similar to the violently fierce music teacher and conductor Terence Fletcher out of Whiplash so that he could psychologically and physically torture some of these unqualified celebrities to get the best out of them.
The final verdict on Kanye West x Adidas Originals' "Yeezy Season 1"? This is more "Lazy Season" and let's hope it stops at part 1. Let's also hope that West may try and have a genuine impact not on society but on planet Earth by deciding to end his career as designer here.
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