Chris Goossens
If you ask 100 people if they know who Kanye West is, every last one of them will say yes. He’s known for his musical masterpieces, hilarious concert outbursts and more recently his family (his wife Kim Kardashian West and their three kids). One of the things people recognize most about him is that he has his own Yeezy Season clothing line, often abbreviated on social media as “YZY SZN”. But, each line is more than just an expensive shirt with holes in it. Here are five facts you (probably) didn’t know about Kanye West’s Yeezy Season.
1. Season 1 Was A Failure
Kanye always had the idea of creating a clothing line, and decided to put the dream into formation in 2011. During the Spring 2012 Paris Fashion Week, Mr. West had the opportunity to debut his creations (simply called “Kanye West Season 1”) in front of the fashion world. It did not go as planned, and received generally negative reviews. The New York Times wrote that “His debut landed him a place somewhere in the middle: not quite a disaster, but not the work of a serious designer, either.” Unsurprisingly Kanye never gave up and his line, which was in fact changed to Yeezy Season in 2015, is now on Season 7. The line has now received endless praise from critics and is internationally renowned for its professionalism, originality, quality, and magnificent presentation.
2. Kanye Has Beef W/ Nike
Prior to signing a $10 million dollar sneaker contract with Adidas, Kanye was signed with Nike. With them, he created the holy grail of sneakerheads, the Nike Air Yeezys which are now worth $3,000+ USD. West eventually became unhappy with Nike’s treatment of him and left the company in 2013. Yeezy Season 3 debuted in 2016 at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. Here, fans began to chant “F*** Nike”, and Kanye soon after began to diss them himself. He performed the song Facts, where he refers to Nike “giving LeBron a billi’ not to run away”. Nike and its representatives have never responded to the song and have refused to make any comments about it or anything even related to Yeezy. Hilariously enough, West once told a fan wearing Nikes to “throw those in the trash right now”.
3. He Wants To Run Hermès
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugm6IQOYakQ
This one might or might come off as a surprise. Kanye has always been known as an ambitious man, but he really is shooting for the moon on this one. He might be at the top of the hip-hop game, but only time will tell if he is able to become the creative director of Hermès, a luxury brand based in Paris. It is realistic though, considering in the past he has collaborated with Louis Vuitton several times. West publicly campaigned for the spot during his own Yeezy Season 3 at Madison Square Garden, where he also made sure the crowd knew that he has already “had the #1 shoe”, in reference to Footwear News giving their 2015 Shoe of the Year to his Yeezy Boost 750. If creative directorship did go to West, it can be assumed that the Yeezy Season would continue, just in Hermès style.
4. ‘Ye Helped Kylie Jenner Begin Her Modeling Career
In 2015, Kanye debuted his Yeezy collaboration with Adidas. He showed off his new sneaker line during New York Fashion Week, with the help of his niece Kylie Jenner. The social media star was given her first shot at modeling during Yeezy Season One, along with the aid of Kim Kardashian, her older sister and wife of Kanye. Diddy, Alexander Wang, Jay-Z, Big Sean, Justin Bieber, and more were there to watch. The show was viewed as extremely successful and helped establish West’s role in the fashion world, and he even revealed the song Wolves here.
5. His Shows Put Him $53 Million In Debt
It was not really debt per say, but still could be called it. In late 2016, when Kanye’s Twitter account was still active, he sent out a string of Tweets revealing $53 million he needed to make up. This was due to the Yeezy Season, as he needed to hire models, rent out stages, hire security, prepare the actual clothes, set up special effects, and the list goes on endlessly. People were quick to call him broke, but that’s simply not the truth. The truth is that yes, he basically lost all that money. But no, he isn’t in “debt”. West easily had enough money to pay off the debt, considering his net worth is in the region of $150 million. Additionally, the shows did make back a substantial amount of cash. Kanye is fine. Actually he’s more than fine, if you factor in the new $21.5 million dollar house Kim and he purchased in Hidden Hills, California.
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