PARIS FASHION WEEK: KANYE'S PLEA

Posted by the Fashion Junior at Large

One of the most hyped events of Paris Fashion Week was Kanye West's debut collection which was shown on Saturday night. There had long been rumours about who the musician might be collaborating with for his first foray into design after a longtime FROW presence. And he dived straight in at the deep-end with a full-on catwalk show at an imposing venue (the grand library of a French lycee opposite the pantheon) on the Saturday night of the Paris schedule. Basically, this was always going to be a BIG DEAL.

Kanye with Chanel Iman and Sky Ferreira (WWD.COM)

For the vast majority of Fashion Editors, the clothes haven't quite lived up to the hype. At The New York Times, Eric Wilson said 'What Mr. West eventually showed was confusing'. Tim Blanks on Style.com wrote that 'what we actually saw was something that looked like a baby Balmain vision of womenswear'. While Lisa Armstong's headline read 'Kanye West's Paris Fashion Week debut was rap with a capital C'. And it wasn't just Fashion Editors having a dig, Malcolm Harris, a designer with connections to the worlds of art, film and music writes an open letter to Kanye begging him to go back to what he does best. All over OUCH.

People were confused by Kanye's use of fur in a Spring/ Summer collection

The models were sent out in clothes which didn't fit

Kanye seems to have pre-empted his critics with the speech he gave at the after-show party. WWD reported his words and we thought we'd post them here in the spirit of true fashion justice.... What do you think?

“Thank you for anybody that didn’t believe, because they motivated us to break our boundaries,” he said.

“We don’t know what the reviews will be, we don’t know what they will say, but I got a chance to go to Italy and feel those fabrics. I begged Louis Vuitton to let me do more shoes after my shoes sold out in two weeks, and they did not. I begged Nike, I begged this company to let me do it. And I took out motherf---ing loans to get the best models, to get the best designers, to get the best venue. I gave you everything that I had.

“This is my first collection. Please be easy. Please give me a chance to grow. This is not some celebrity s---. I don’t f--- with celebrities. I f--- with the creatives in this room, the amazing people who spend every day of their life trying to make the world a more beautiful place.

“The amount of people that tried to get me a celebrity f---ing deal. They said, ‘You need to do boot-cut jeans, or you won’t sell.’ Shut the f--- up ! Or Hedi Slimane in the motherf---ing Mercer, sitting with me, saying, ‘Stop giving them your ideas, Kanye. Do your own thing.’ Hedi Slimane! To feel so frustrated. And I thank anybody who came to this party, everybody who supported, everybody who believed, because people thought it was a joke, and maybe people still do, but I can only grow from this point”


 After ranting this, he asked the DJ to play "Try A Little Tenderness" by Otis Redding. Bless his cotton socks.