Kanye who was coming off two sold-out concerts at Madison Square Garden provided shuttle busses for showgoers to travel from Midtown Manhattan to Roosevelt Island, the spot in the East River where he put on his fashion presentation today.
His concert - minimalism. His fashion show, a performance art and with controversy all around. West came up with the idea to ask for “multiracial models only” for the casting of this show, which caused a rightful furor. He told Vogue, “The ten thousand people that showed up didn’t have a problem with it.”
Kanye insists the concept—which came out of discussions with his longtime collaborator Vanessa Beecroft, the Italian artist who helps to stage and choreograph his shows—was not intended to exclude anyone, least of all black women. “How do you word the idea that you want all variations of black?” West said. “How do you word that exactly?”
The disaster struck then. After making high profile fashion editors and critics wait in a holding pen, models lined up in formation, wearing basically brown nude leotards in Yeezy’s signature Capezio chic, for nearly two hours before the actual runway began, and during it, viewers reported from the ground that some of them were actually passing out. Oh, Kanye!
