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When Kanye West (finally) released his new capsule for GAP’s full lookbook — co-created with Balenciaga designer Demna — earlier this year, he couldn’t have picked a more poignant moment. Less than 24 hours later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Normally the fashion press would be all over anything Kanye does, but fashion suddenly felt irrelevant when a humanitarian crisis struck. But it’s worth revisiting what a watershed moment we’ve allowed for fashion, perhaps completely out of touch with its dark outlook.
No matter what one thinks of Ye or Demna, this release should go down in fashion history for redefining (or erasing) the philological boundaries between high and low, and in designer fashion, streetwear and what I call clothes – everyday clothes that don’t require much thought for many.
Before we get into the design elements of the capsule, the most important thing needs to be emphasized: the image is full of edgy, dark and downright menacing collection released by GAP. Let me repeat it again – released by the mother’s resentment GAP, the gold medal Olympic champion of Steady Mall Americana, is the most outrageous, mind-numbing brand to ever grace the face of the earth. This symbol of American naïveté that ruled the mall in the 90s was once flipped on the back of an ad featuring mostly white innocents dancing in khaki pants, making it hard to avoid such words. “revolution”
Maybe not revolution, but subversive is definitely an appropriate word. I would have given anything to have been in the GAP boardroom when this lookbook first came out. Just imagine – old white dudes in khakis and gingham shirts watching this – their Protestant minds trying to process what exactly that means. Yes, GAP has been in decline for years, but it’s still making a lot of money by pretending to be the same American uniform. Did they just throw it all away? Will this bring the same kind of evangelism and heartburn as it did on Converse when Rick Owens released the first collaborative images featuring the pentagram? Did you delete your entire Instagram — even for a day — for a dark vision that goes against everything GAP has stood for in its entire existence?
Because that image, now resurrected by a certain Yeezy Instagram profile, is dark as hell. Demna’s career has been taking a gradual turn for the worse over the past two years. Demna’s pre-fall 22 Balenciaga collection last December — and perhaps his best yet — was goth and grit reminiscent of the New York heyday of the ’80s and ’90s, which was light years away from the vanilla bliss of its cultural outlook. That GAP was selling at the time. It undoubtedly reflects the darkness of our current world situation.
Bringing such a vision to the masses through the smallest possible channel is a ball game. Whether the masses buy it or not is another matter. So far, at least judging by my Instagram, Yeezy GAP customers are fashion insiders or at least more interested in fashion (and of course your average hypebeast). There may be a reason for this. A strong-shouldered, oversized silhouette is presented, and the clothes are made of dirty/shiny fabrics, a challenging proposition by any mass market standard. Imagine these clothes anywhere outside the streets of major fashion capitals, and then imagine how ordinary people would wear them, and it becomes clear what the bold idea of Yeezy GAP is.
I’ll come back to breakdowns, because that’s key. In the bigger picture, the real fashion prize is awarded not to the person who wows the fashion diehard, but to the one who convinces the masses to adjust their gaze.
Which brings us back to the erasure of semiotic codes. What did Yeezy GAP do with Balenciaga? It is not designer fashion, luxury, or streetwear, or mass market clothing. It’s not a high-low collaboration like H&M and Target pioneered, or a simple celebrity-brand tie-in product a la Dior x Travis Scott. It’s everything in between. It has broken all the semiotic codes and definitions surrounding fashion these days. Considering the complexity of the proposition and the price point, it’s very much for elites, and it’s very elite. Above all, it’s food for thought, and that’s what good design should be.
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