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Kanye West cancels his New York Fashion Week show
Kanye West, the provocative rapper turned provocative fashion designer, has cancelled his New York Fashion Week show, it has been reported.
West’s Adidas-supported Yeezy Season Six show was rumoured to be taking place on Wednesday 13th September, but a representative from Redken, the beauty partner for the event, emailed media outlets to say that the show "is no longer occurring." It is thought that he will stage an alternative presentation at a later date in the year.
The elusive star had never officially confirmed a slot with fashion week organisers, however this was all seen as normal behaviour for West, who rarely plays by the same rules that other designers do. On previous occasions, he has circulated invitations less than 24 hours before showtime (prompting media scrambles) and back in February he almost hijacked another brand, Marchesa’s, big moment before kindly pushing his presentation back by two hours to allow them to have their above-board moment in the spotlight.
Yeezy shows are in no way typical fashion shows. Creative polyglot West chooses to offer up his catwalk wares in performances and, while sometimes they work well, they sometimes go very badly indeed. A show next week would have marked a year since his frankly disastrous show on Roosevelt Island, where models buckled and fainted in searing heat, as they were asked to stand completely still for over an hour whilst wearing puffer coats. For another show, West offered 38 rules for his models to abide by including ‘no smiling’ and ‘no fast movements’ or ‘no slow movements’.
Despite the (routine) controversies, West’s shows have been effective at shaking up the format of what we recognise as a fashion show. His dystopian armies of bodies wearing utilitarian clothing, in choreographed routines by artists like Vanessa Beecroft, certainly evoke some emotions, even if not the ones that editors are used to feeling when looking at clothes on a catwalk.
More importantly, they sell well with his audience and his trainers, particularly, have gained cult status. "What designer on the planet can sell, consistently, 40,000 shoes. In two minutes?" he asked in an interview last year with Harper’s Bazaar, before his wife, the reality television star Kim Kardashian-West reminded him that they actually sold out in just one minute.
Despite (or likely because of) the furore that keeping up with Kanye entails, the fashion press can’t stay away. Even if the officials don’t fully embrace his whirlwind world and its lack of traditional catwalk etiquette, they can’t deny that the postponement of Yeezy Season 6 blows a uniquely-shaped hole in the New York Fashion Week schedule.