This article was published April 29, 2023 and updated on May 2
Kanye West, now mononymously known as “Ye,” isn’t done with fashion, even if fashion’s done with him. In late April, Ye began preparing for YEEZY SEASON 10, his first fashion show since the disastrous Paris Fashion Week presentation he held in late 2022, wherein Ye debuted his ignominious White Lives Matter T-shirt.
The YEEZY SEASON 10 news quietly broke as much of today’s Ye news does: sudden uploads from Ye fanpages. Given that Ye has been banned from Twitter and deleted his own Instagram page (again), little wonder that he’d turn to his most ardent supporters to do free PR work on his behalf.
Consisting of two barren Notes app messages offering little beyond a date, time, location, and look (“YZY Casting Models With Shaved Heads”), the April 27 YEEZY SEASON 10 casting call still managed to draw substantial, newly-bald crowds to the Los Angeles artist lofts where Ye was seen overseeing the casting.
Naturally, Ye sported his own freshly-shaved head. The dog T-shirt was apparently gifted to Ye by a fan who attended the casting.
Deeper meaning could potentially be extrapolated here using Ye’s 2013 single “Black Skinhead” as the basis — something about referencing one’s own self, something about white power skinheads — or not.
Next to nothing was known about Ye’s YEEZY SEASON 10 collection before it happened, naturally. It wasn’t impossible to imagine that the footwear will be created by Zellerfeld, which produced 3D-printed boots for YEEZY SEASON 9 but, then again, perhaps Ye’s anti-Semitism could’ve scared them off.
Then again, all the vile stuff that Ye said over the past several months hasn’t spooked collaborators like 424 on Fairfax founder Guillermo Andrade, who was seen getting breakfast with Ye and his secret wife, Bianca Censori, in March 2023.
Clothing-wise, though, all one could’ve really expected from YEEZY SEASON 10 was what Ye recently styled Censori in when the two attended Fear of God’s recent fashion show, which may hint at the aesthetic of YEEZY SEASON 10: a skin-tight one-piece ensemble, worn with almost nothing underneath.
Censori’s look was reminiscent of the stuff that Ye’s ex-wife Kim wore around the time of DONDA, all figure-hugging latex with vague references to retro military longjohns.
It’s the sort of thing that Ye has long since explored with his strange, anti-commercial fashion shows, even less inhibited and more obtuse (perhaps only for the sake of being obtuse).
Other imagery uploaded by Ye’s creative team further underscores the haggard dystopian fashion that seemed likely to inform YEEZY SEASON 10.
Fans didn’t have to wait long to see what was actually to come of YEEZY SEASON 10, though.
On May 1, the same day as the 2023 Met Gala — where Ye is likely persona non grata — Ye held his YEEZY SEASON 10 fashion show in an empty storefront in Los Angeles.
The YEEZY SEASON 10 scene was sparse: barren industrial walls, a booming soundsystem, and crowds of skinheaded models wearing skin-tight white T-shirts and black pants, all clutching candles in some sort of pseudointellectual statement.
No real clothes of note, though attendees were given their own free clingy T-shirts, emblematic of the snug fit that Ye has been seen wearing as of late.
Ye’s invite did simply title the event “YZY FREE,” after all.
Ye was all but banished from the greater fashion world when, in October 2022, he (deep breath) debuted his White Lives Matter T-shirt while hanging out with all-time bigot Candace Owens, harassed fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, lied about Virgil Abloh’s death, and spouted enough anti-Semitic hate speech to get the boot from business partners like Balenciaga and adidas, which dissolved its longstanding partnership with Ye’s YEEZY brand.
Whether adidas is undoing that decision or not, the fallout from the YEEZY SEASON 9 show dealt a massive series of well-deserved blows to Ye’s public goodwill and financial standing.
Ye’s terrible decisions peaked with his “Ye 2024” presidential campaign, which enlisted the talents of awful human beings like Nick Fuentes and Milo Yiannopoulos, who managed to fleece over $40,000 from Ye before getting axed from Ye 2024 in December 2022. Everything collapsed after a disastrous interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Since early 2023, Ye has laid low, mostly shunning social media and self-isolating while licking his wounds over the justified criticism that followed him in the wake of his anti-Semitic outbursts.
YEEZY SEASON 10 could be Ye’s first proper attempt to leap back into the spotlight, with much more to likely to follow. It just goes to show that you can’t ever properly shun anyone as rich and well-known as Ye, even when they truly do deserve it.
