It’s official: Balenciaga has severed ties with the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. As WWD reports, the announcement was made Thursday after the brand’s third-quarter results were published.
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Balenciaga’s parent company, Kering, told WWD: “Balenciaga has no longer any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist.” Though they didn’t say any more than that, they didn’t have to.
Ye opened their 2023 summer show, infamously sporting a Balenciaga mouthguard and donning, yet all photos of him from it have been deleted from the website. The rapper’s latest collaboration with the fashion label—and it’s artistic director Demna—was the Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga line.
It was released earlier this year in conjunction with West’s “Donda 2" experience that went down in Miami. Last year, Demna also served as creative director for one of West’s album listening events as well.
Last month, he ended his partnership with Gap Inc. In addition, his “White Lives Matter” t-shirt stunt a few weeks ago—alongside Candice Owens—kicked off a tirade of anti-Black and anti-semitic remarks.
Over the last 3 weeks, West has: declared Black Lives Matter a scam (and intentionally failed to separate the organization from the movement), appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson, declared he’s going to go “death con 3 on Jewish people” and insisted George Floyd wasn’t “really” killed by police.
It isn’t a surprise that Balenciaga wants nothing to do with him—especially since his own bank stopped all of their financial dealings with Ye. Additionally, despite working with Adidas for a decade, the company shared on October 6 that their partnership was “under review.”
With West being suspended from Instagram and Twitter for hate speech, he shared plans of buying right-wing social media platform Parler. If other brands are business savvy, they’ll stop their involvement with Ye as well.
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