Kanye West Walks Muddied Runway For Balenciaga Fashion Show
Kanye West has walked his first runway for Balenciaga’s 2023 Paris Fashion Week show.
The businessman transformed into a model as he intensely strutted through the moist clumps of dirt in Parc des Expositions on Sunday (Oct. 2).
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Ye kept to the Spanish fashion house’s strict utilitarian theme, wearing a jacket adorned with a mess of pockets and pouches.
The show’s design was reminiscent of West’s previous collaboration, Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga, with Balenciaga’s creative director and longtime friend Demna.
While Ye didn’t explain the bleak theme for the 2023 spring show, Demnas took to Instagram on Sunday (Oct. 2) to double down on the mystery.
“I’ve decided to no longer explain my collections and verbalize my designs, but to express a state of mind. I hate boxes, and I hate labels,” Demnas expressed in his printed note. “Individualism in fashion is downgraded to pseudo trends dictated by a post in stories of some celebrity of the moment.”
The Georgian designer continued, detailing the deeper meaning behind his show’s apocalyptic environment, seemingly alluding to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war.
“The set of this show is a metaphor for digging for truth and being down to earth. Let us let everyone be anyone and make love, not war.”
Ye’s involvement in the Balenciaga show arrives on the heels of his departure from Gap.
During a recent discussion with Good Morning America, West explained his battle with The Gap and his exit from the brand.
“It was all kind of a disregard for the voice of something that I co-created. I co-created the product at Adidas. I co-created the product at Gap,” he said. “That means that I was there for some specific agenda, not for Yeezy Gap to be everything that it could be or this dream that I had about what the Gap could be. It’s time for me to make my own thing.”
The rapper is set to take the battle to Adidas next.
