Kanye West’s Yeezy Fashion Line Poorly Received By Critics At NYFW
On Wednesday, Kanye West held a last-minute show to promote his Yeezy Season 2 collection as part of New York Fashion Week. The show was the second outing for the Yeezy fashion line, which debuted at the Spring New York Fashion Week in February.
As Us Weekly reported Thursday, some big-name critics did not respond well to the collection. Former New York Times writer Cathy Horyn wrote a scathing review for New York magazine. Horyn said the tops looked like Spanx and the woeful-looking models made her “think of POWs.” She went on to say that West’s celebrity is the only reason he has been given any place in fashion.
“The military conceit was apt, given the mind-lock that Kanye has managed to put on the fashion world. This second round of drab, broken-down basics proved he can’t be taken seriously as a designer, but nevertheless many people in fashion do seem to take West seriously — they keep showing up expectantly for his performances — and that makes them fools. Because they wouldn’t bother with this stuff if it were offered by an unknown, and if it’s the spectacle they seek, it changes as little as the clothes.”
If the military-themed show had Horyn thinking of POWs, rapper Ice-T took it a step further. He responded to the show on Twitter.
Kanye’s fashion show stuff looks like future Slave gear to me… Just sayin. pic.twitter.com/E59UE882rK
— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) September 17, 2015
Robin Givhan of the Washington Post tweeted, “In all its breathless wonder. #YeezySeason2 which kinda reminds me of season one with better lighting.”
Justin Jones, writing in the Daily Beast, offered his own unflattering assessment of the collection.
“The show was far from refreshing. Indeed, the only ‘fresh’ thing to come out of the much-anticipated Yeezy Season 2 was a new track he threw out during the finale. Maybe West really should stick to his day job.”
Jones notes that Kanye has yet to be warmly received by fashion critics. It was after his first collection debuted at Paris Fashion Week in 2011 that he was first told to “stick to the day job,” as Jones quotes a Telegraph critique from the time. The “mediocre” reviews of Yeezy Season 1 in February were actually an improvement on his previous fashion outings.
The Guardian wrote after Wednesday’s show that Kanye West would have an uphill battle making it in fashion, regardless of what he put on the runway. The paper seemed to put a different spin on West’s celebrity status than did Horyn.
“The industry can be particularly unforgiving of celebrity designers, because any suggestion that fashion is easy – that success can be as simple as slapping the right name on a T-shirt – is a bad look for the business as a whole. To his detractors, his ambitions also seemed to be further evidence of an out-of-control ego.”
[Photo by Randy Brooke / Getty Images Entertainment]
