So, Do You Love or Hate Yeezy Season 4?
No one ever accused Kanye West of not knowing how to make a scene. Today, the designer (slash maverick musical genius, slash GOAT “Ellen” guest), debuted his hotly anticipated new collection for Yeezy to great fanfare — as is to be expected from the man who packed Madison Square Garden tighter than one of Kim’s pencil skirts for the debut of Yeezy Season 3 last February.
Unlike last season’s free-for-all, though, Season 4 took place at a much more intimate venue: the lawn between the abandoned Smallpox Hospital and the Louis Kahn-designed Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island.
The location was kept tightly under wraps until just prior to the show: Editors gathered at a secret meeting place in Manhattan and were shuttled to the show’s location via the kind of carpet-ceilinged tour bus usually used to ferry senior citizens to Atlantic City to play slots. Other attendees were provided with cars or were told to take the aerial tramway that spans the East River. The logistics of transporting thousands people to a tiny island caused the show to be pushed back an hour and a half from its original 3 p.m. start time, as fashion editors tweeted “Glad I brought a snack!” Of course, most of us watched not from Roosevelt Island but on the live stream hosted exclusively on Tidal — complete show for subscribers, miserly one-minute preview for nonsubscribers (thank God for sisters with Tidal memberships).
West drew criticism earlier this week for his Twitter casting call for “multiracial women only” — a stipulation West said was misunderstood, and he actually wanted “all variations of black.” (The casting call also requested “No makeup please,” so plus one for #NoFilter beauty, at least.) Despite the eyebrow-raising phrasing, the end result was a presentation literally full of black women with a wide range of skin tones — a stunning and meaningful sight in an industry that is still, overwhelmingly and for no really good reason, dominated by white models.
When the show finally started, we were treated to a wide, triangle-shaped lawn filled with Yeezy models standing in place, grouped loosely according to skin tone, and wearing outfits that matched their skin in many shades of nude. The mise-en-scène was created with conceptual artist Vanessa Beecroft, a frequent Kanye collaborator, but the standing-in-the-sun-for-hours part took its toll — Tidal’s cameras caught PAs handing off bottles of Poland Spring to some models, while others sat and rose seemingly at random. Overall, though, it made a striking sight, women dotting the green in West’s now-signature body-conscious pieces in a rainbow of neutrals: white, cream, camel, caramel, coffee, black.
More models, including Teyana Taylor and Sofia Richie, walked around them on a triangle-shaped runway. The runway was one of the longest we’ve seen, and it showed. Several models seemed unsure in their heels — one took hers off midwalk, another swayed and walked so awkwardly she was finally helped offstage. The clear vinyl boots debuted yesterday by none other than Kim Kardashian West were there, as was the gold jewelry that’s new this season — choker-length necklaces with a “Saint” nameplate, longer chains hung with rough-cut medallions featuring actual saints in worn-down relief, like relics.
On Twitter, fashion folks grumbled about their ordeal getting there, waiting, and getting back, and cynics said there was nothing new in more nude dancewear from Yeezy. But the kids — the ones who made bomber jackets last year’s biggest trend and who buy out all the Boosts and Pablo T-shirts as soon as they hit the store — they seemed to love it. And that’s what matters, right?
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