Fashion brand Balenciaga has announced they have officially cut ties with Ye amid claims of offensive remarks made by the rapper recently.
Outcast
Following its third-quarter earnings report on Thursday, the label’s parent company said in a statement, “Balenciaga has no longer any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist.”
Balenciaga reportedly began distancing itself from West after his appearance on the controversial podcast Drink Champs last week. On the podcast, Kanye made claims that George Floyd’s death was not a result of Officer Derek Chauvin leaning on his neck but rather from fentanyl.
On October 17th, the fashion label announced in a statement that West’s runway look from the Spring 2023 fashion show in Paris had been deleted from Vogue runway and Balenciaga’s website.
Balenciaga also said that it removed a section on its website that advertised the three Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga collaborations. The items are also no longer available on other online retailers.
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Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend
Balenciaga was one of Kanye’s closest and oldest partners in luxury fashion. The two have been entwined for years, thanks to Kanye’s long-standing relationship with the house’s creative director Demna Gvaslia.
Demna and his brother Guram founded the fashion label Vestments in 2014. In 2015, they consulted West on his Yeezy Season 1 line, and by the end of that year, Demna had taken over as the creative director of Balenciaga.
West and Gvaslia’s relationship solidified in 2019 when Demna served as the creative director of West’s Donda listening parties in 2021.
“With Ye, I have something that I don’t really have with other people, where anything is possible,” Demna told The Times last year. “For me, talking with him is like going back in time to the 8-year-old me who doesn’t have all these barriers and filters. We spent like two and a half hours talking about buttons. Those kinds of conversations help me to evolve as a designer because I think: ‘Yeah, why do we do it like this? Why buttons? Why packaging?’ I never thought about that before.”
Their working relationship continued into 2022 when Balenciaga linked up with Yeezy as part of the now-terminated collaboration with the Gap. Although West ended his partnership with the Gap back in September, several of the items from the Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga collection were released.
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Still Got It
West remained friendly enough with Balenciaga that he got to be the first person to walk in the label’s Paris Fashion Week show. However, all images of West at the show have now been removed from the label’s website.
West bounced back quickly and overshadowed his own modeling cameo by wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt alongside Candace Owens, a conservative commentator, at the premiere of his YZY SZN 9 line.
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