Gigi Hadid has publicly spoken up in defense of journalist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson after Kanye West hit out at the Vogue editor for her commentary on his Paris Fashion Week Yeezy show, which featured widely condemned “White Lives Matter” T-shirts.
Taking to her Instagram Stories after the show, Karefa-Johnson shared a text conversation with a friend as she unpacked her reaction to West’s runway choices.
Initially she wrote that she was “fuming” and described the show as “indefensible” before saying that she felt West’s vision was misguided.
“He was trying to illustrate a dystopian world in the future when whiteness might become extinct or at least would be in enough danger to demand defense,” she said in the screen shots. “But the danger is that, this very premise, the idea that white supremacy is in danger of extinction…is what justifies mass incarceration, murder en masse, indeed even the advent of slavery.”
“I guess I get what he was trying to do… he was trying to be a duchampian. It wasn’t. It didn’t land and it was deeply offensive, violent and dangerous,” she wrote.
Later she described the T-shirts as “pure violence”: “There is no excuse, there is no art here…. I do think if you asked Kanye, he’d say there was art, and revolution, and all of the things in that t-shirt.”
West responded by sharing a screen shot of Karefa-Johnson’s Instagram account as well as pictures of the editor, appearing to criticize her appearance. He also shared screen shots of messages from who is thought to be his design director, Mowalola Ogunlesi, who advised him: “I also don’t think u should insult that writer. U could actually hv real conversation about the tee.”
Gigi Hadid added her own comment to that particular post, writing to West: “You wish u had a percentage of her intellect. You have no idea haha…. If there’s actually a point to any of your shit she might be the only person that could save u. As if the ‘honor’ of being invited to your show should keep someone from giving their opinion..? Lol. You’re a bully and a joke.”
She later added on her Instagram Stories: “I was trying very hard not to give that man air time, but publicly bullying someone who criticizes your work on your massive platform is another level of ridiculousness to me. If you can’t take it don’t dish it. If you can’t take criticism, especially the smart, nuanced, and kind criticism that GKJ provided [after] yesterday’s show, then don’t put work out for public consumption.
“This is immature bully behavior,” she continued. “It’s behavior that we have all enabled by continuing to engage with this work for the sake of vitality, web traffic, mere curiosity, or whatever it is. Enough. It’s not smart. It’s not interesting. It’s not nuanced. It’s dangerous.”
Hadid described Karefa-Johnson as “one of the most important voices in our industry,” and signed off by adding that she could “school that disgraceful man in more ways than he knows.”
This article first appeared on Glamour
