Ye Lashes Out at LVMH Chief Bernard Arnault

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Ye is keeping the controversy coming — and again going after LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton chief executive officer Bernard Arnault.

The designer and rapper, formerly known as Kanye West, riled up fashion — and the internet at large — with his Yzy fashion show in Paris on Monday.

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The online spotlight shone brightest on his T-shirt, which read “White Lives Matter” — which the Anti-Defamation League deems “a white supremacist phrase that originated in early 2015 as a racist response to the Black Lives Matter movement.” Ye said the shirt “says it all,” although many found it offensive and the outcry over his actions is ongoing.

But on the sidelines, Ye kept at Arnault, whom he declared to be “my new Drake” and “the number-one competition” at the show Monday.

Arnault leads the world’s largest luxury house, ranked by Forbes to be the world’s second-richest person with a fortune of $153.8 billion, including a gain of $9.1 billion on Tuesday alone.

But Ye’s beef — which so far seems to be one-sided — metastasized into something else Tuesday on Instagram, where he made a series of controversial claims.

“SPANK MY HAND WITH THE RULER(S) I’LL GO SIT IN THE ‘PRINCIPAL(S)’ OFFICE CAN’T WE TALK ABOUT MORE IMPORTANT THINGS LIKE HOW LATE THE SHOW WAS OR HOW BERNARD ARNAULT KILLED MY BEST FRIEND EVERYONE’S GOT A RIGHT TO AN OPINION RIGHT THERE’S MINE,” Ye wrote in a post, featuring a bust of Roman poet Virgil.

LVMH has not publicly responded to Ye’s statements and a spokesperson did not immediately respond to a WWD query.

Virgil Abloh — one of fashion’s most beloved designers and the first Black man to be men’s artistic director at Louis Vuitton — died from a rare form of cancer at 41 last year. Both Abloh and Ye interned at another LVMH house, Fendi, in 2009.

However, Arnault championed Abloh and in 2021, when LVMH raised its stake in the designer’s Off-White brand, the billionaire said he was “thrilled” to be expanding the partnership.

In another post on Tuesday that seemed to bring more heat than light to the situation, Ye said the streetwear brand Supreme is owned by LVMH — it’s not, VF Corp. bought the brand in 2020 from private equity backers —  and that “IN WAR THEY WILL SEND YOUR OWN PEOPLE AT YOU. GOOD ONE BERNARD.”

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