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    Ye Is Sued for Hostile Work Environment at Donda Academy and Yeezy

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    A former employee sued the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, claiming a hostile work environment at Yeezy, his fashion brand, and Donda Academy, his private school.Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, was sued Tuesday by a former employee who accused him of discrimination and creating a hostile work environment by calling Adolf Hitler “great,” disparaging Jews and saying that “gay people are not true Christians.”The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by Trevor Phillips, who says he was hired in November 2022, around the time a series of antisemitic remarks publicly made by Ye lost the artist his major-label record deal and put his businesses in jeopardy.Phillips was initially hired to oversee “projects related to growing cotton” and other plants in an effort to make Yeezy, Ye’s fashion brand, “self-sustainable,” the lawsuit said, and then went on to work for Donda Academy, Ye’s private school in Southern California.Phillips’s lawsuit claims that Ye made antisemitic comments in front of staff members at Donda Academy, including, “the Jews are out to get me” and “the Jews are stealing all my money.” After Adidas ended its decade-long partnership with Ye over his public remarks, the lawsuit claimed, the rapper told Phillips: “The Jews are working with Adidas to freeze up my money to try and make me broke!”The lawsuit claims that Ye treated Black employees at Donda Academy, including Phillips, “considerably worse than white employees.”Representatives for Ye and Donda Academy did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kanye West and Adidas: How Misconduct Broke a Lucrative Partnership

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      A year ago, after producing hundreds of shoe styles and billions of dollars together, Adidas broke with Kanye West as he made antisemitic and other offensive public comments. But Adidas had been tolerating his misconduct behind the scenes for nearly a decade. B35309 2015 AQ4832 AQ2659 AQ4830 AQ4831 AQ4829 AQ4828 AQ4836 AQ2660 BB1839 AQ2661 BB5350 […] More

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      Inside Kanye West’s Fraught Relationship With Adidas: 7 Takeaways

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      The runaway success of the Yeezy collaboration between Kanye West and Adidas came at a price as the company tolerated misconduct by him for nearly a decade.When Adidas cut ties with Kanye West a year ago, ending their wildly lucrative shoe deal, the breakup appeared to be the culmination of weeks of his inflammatory remarks about Jews and Black Lives Matter. But a New York Times examination found that behind the scenes, the partnership was fraught from the start.Mr. West, who now goes by Ye, subjected employees to antisemitic and crude sexual comments and routine verbal abuse. As Adidas executives doubled down on a partnership that boosted company profits and made Mr. West a billionaire, they scrambled for ways to cope with the star’s demands and provocations.Interviews with current and former employees of Adidas and of Mr. West, along with hundreds of previously undisclosed internal records, including contracts, text messages and financial documents, provide the fullest accounting yet of the relationship. Here are seven takeaways.For almost 10 years, Adidas looked past Mr. West’s misconduct as profits soared.Mr. West’s first contract with Adidas, in 2013, had the most generous terms it had ever offered to a non-athlete. In the next one, three years later, Mr. West got more money, and Adidas got a morals clause — allowing it to end the partnership if he did anything that led to “disrepute, contempt, scandal,” according to a copy obtained by The Times.As the partnership earned billions of dollars, Mr. West’s behavior grew increasingly erratic. But it is not clear whether the brand ever considered invoking the morals clause before terminating the deal last year.Both Adidas and Mr. West declined interview requests and did not comment on The Times’s findings.Mr. West showed a troubling fixation on Jews and Hitler in the partnership.Shortly after signing with Adidas, he met with designers at company headquarters in Germany to discuss ideas. He was so offended by their sketches, he drew a swastika on one, shocking employees.He later told a Jewish Adidas manager to kiss a portrait of Hitler every day. He informed a member of the company’s executive board that he had paid a seven-figure settlement to one of his own employees who accused him of repeatedly praising Hitler.Mr. West told Adidas colleagues that he admired Hitler’s command of propaganda. He also expressed a belief that Jews had special powers allowing them to amass money and influence.He brought pornography and crude comments into the workplace.Weeks before the swastika incident in 2013, Mr. West made Adidas executives watch pornography during a meeting at his Manhattan apartment. He continued showing pornography to Adidas employees at work. Last year, he ambushed Adidas executives in Los Angeles with a pornographic film.Staff members also complained to top executives that he had made angry, sexually offensive comments to them.Big demands and mood swings weighed on the relationship.Mr. West contended repeatedly that Adidas was exploiting him. He sought more money and power, even suggesting that he should become chief executive.His complaints were often delivered amid severe mood swings, creating whiplash for employees. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he at times rejected the assessment and resisted treatment. Tears were common; so was fury. In 2019, he abruptly moved his Yeezy operation to remote Cody, Wyo., ordering the Adidas team to relocate. He used “terms like ‘believer’ and ‘pilgrimage’” to describe those who would follow him there, an Adidas executive told colleagues in a group text chain. In a meeting with Adidas’s leaders that year to discuss his demands, he hurled shoes around the room.Adidas adapted to Mr. West’s behavior: ‘We are in a code red.’Managers and top executives started the group text chain, the “Yzy hotline,” to address issues involving Mr. West.The Adidas team working on Yeezys adopted a strategy they likened to firefighting, rotating members on and off the front lines of dealing with the artist. “We are in a code red,” the team’s general manager texted colleagues in 2019. “The first line is completely exhausted and don’t feel supported.”The company assigned a human resources official to the unit and gave new hires a subscription to a meditation app. The staff regularly gathered for something akin to group therapy.Mr. West on tour in 2016, the year he and Adidas renegotiated their deal.A J Mast for The New York TimesAs the brand grew more reliant on Yeezys, it sweetened the deal for Mr. West.Under the 2016 contract, he received a 15 percent royalty on net sales, with $15 million upfront along with millions of dollars in company stock each year.The “biggest issue,” an Adidas document from contract negotiations noted, was “putting CASH in Kanye’s pocket to show him we VALUE him.” The partnership would propel him to Forbes’s list of the world’s richest people.And in 2019, Adidas agreed to another enticement: $100 million annually, officially for Yeezy marketing but, in practice, a fund that Mr. West could spend with little oversight.He still stands to make money from the Adidas deal.After the relationship ruptured a year ago and Yeezy sales came to a halt, both Adidas and Mr. West were hit hard. The company projected its first annual loss in decades. Mr. West’s net worth plummeted.But they had at least one more chance to keep making money together. In May, the company began releasing the remaining $1.3 billion worth of Yeezys. A cut of the proceeds would go to charity. But most of the revenue would go to Adidas, and Mr. West was entitled to royalties. More

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      Kanye West, Dropped by CAA, Makes Adidas and Corporate Partners Squirm

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      The antisemitic outbursts and provocations by the artist now known as Ye have raised questions about how much offensive behavior companies are willing to tolerate from a proven moneymaker.Update: Adidas said on Tuesday that it is cutting ties with Kanye West.Kanye West had already been burning bridges in the music industry. He was disinvited from performing at the Grammy Awards last spring after erratic behavior. He withdrew from headlining this year’s Coachella festival just over a week before it began. His last album was released not on streaming services, but exclusively on a proprietary $200 speaker device.This month Mr. West, who now goes by Ye, came under fire for making a series of antisemitic remarks and wearing a shirt with a slogan associated with white supremacists, putting some of his fashion-related businesses — which appear to be more lucrative these days than his musical ventures — in jeopardy.It has become a make-or-break moment for his career, and raised questions about how much offensive behavior companies are willing to tolerate from a proven moneymaker.Adidas, the German sneaker giant whose collaboration with Ye’s company, Yeezy, has been estimated to be worth billions, has said that their partnership was “under review” — prompting the Anti-Defamation League to ask, “what more do you need to review?” It appeared that Adidas continued to sell his products, though. (On Tuesday, after this article was published, Adidas announced it would cut ties with Ye.) Ye ended his Yeezy Gap partnership last month, before the latest controversies erupted, but in recent days Gap sent out promotional emails for the Yeezy Gap hoodie.There have been some signs that the fashion industry is distancing itself from Ye, as the former halo effect of his celebrity turned into an Achilles’ heel after he appeared at Paris Fashion Week earlier this month in a shirt that read “White Lives Matter,” and then went on to make antisemitic remarks on social media and in a series of interviews, posting on Twitter that he would go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”Balenciaga, whose fashion show Ye opened in Paris this month with a surprise modeling appearance, deleted him from its pictures and videos of the show. Similar images disappeared from Vogue Runway, the platform of record for fashion shows. And Skims, the shapewear brand started by Ye’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, that he reportedly helped shape in design and aesthetic, described him as a “small minority shareholder” and said that he had “no active role at Skims.”And Ms. Kardashian condemned “hate speech” in a post on Twitter on Monday, which named no one but said: “I stand together with the Jewish community and call on the terrible violence and hateful rhetoric towards them to come to an immediate end.”The designer Willy Chavarria, who last worked with Ye in 2020 on Yeezy Gap, said in an email, “I think it’s important for brands that use Ye for their gain like Balenciaga and Adidas to be forthcoming on their position on hate speech.”Ye has weathered crises before, especially since 2016, when he was hospitalized; he later said he had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In recent years he has been condemned for saying that Harriet Tubman “never actually freed the slaves” and that centuries of slavery had been “a choice”; polarized fans with his embrace of right-wing politics and former President Donald J. Trump; launched a quixotic campaign for president in 2020; and split with Ms. Kardashian. He has continued to work amid it all.Much of the music industry, where an artist’s notoriety is often a key selling point, has appeared to take more of a wait-and-see attitude about his latest controversies.But there is uncertainty about his musical future, too. Ye is no longer represented by the Creative Artists Agency, one of the world’s major booking agencies, a representative of the company said. On Monday, the film and television studio MRC announced that it was shelving a completed documentary about Ye following his antisemitic outbursts. He is no longer signed to Def Jam, his longtime record company; his contract expired with his 2021 album, “Donda.” And Ye’s own label, G.O.O.D. Music, which has released music by other artists like the rapper Pusha T, is also no longer affiliated with Def Jam, according to a person briefed on the deals. A representative of Def Jam declined to comment, and Ye did not respond to questions sent to a representative.“Will Kanye bounce back from this?” asked Randy Phillips, who was the promoter for a benefit concert Ye performed with Drake last December at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum that drew more than 60,000 fans and was streamed live by Amazon. “He could. He’s a musical genius. But it’s going to take time. It’s not going to be immediate.”Reaching a High Note, Then FallingYe, floating above it all during his 2016 Saint Pablo Tour. After a series of onstage monologues, the tour was cut short.A J Mast for The New York TimesIn 2016, as he performed on a spaceshiplike platform that hovered over sold-out arena crowds during his Saint Pablo Tour, Ye appeared to be at the peak of his creative powers.More on Kanye WestKanye West, the rapper and fashion designer who now goes by Ye, has been at the center of several controversies.Runway Scandal: Ye wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt during a Paris fashion show. The use of the phrase, which the Anti-Defamation League has attributed to white supremacists, was widely condemned.Corporate Partners: A series of antisemitic outbursts by the artist have raised questions about how much offensive behavior companies are willing to tolerate from a proven moneymaker.Adidas Cuts Ties: The German sportswear giant, the most important partner in Ye’s fashion empire, ended its lucrative relationship with the rapper after his antisemitic remarks.Parler Deal: Parler, the social media service known for its right-wing audience, said that Ye would purchase its site, days after Instagram and Twitter restricted his accounts.His seventh studio album, “The Life of Pablo,” was his latest No. 1 hit and his show was received as an event. He was moving full-steam into the fashion world. His marriage to Ms. Kardashian, a reality-TV princess, had made him even more famous.But Ye never finished the tour.Shortly after he delivered a long, grievance-filled monologue at a concert in Sacramento that November, and abruptly ended the show after just a few songs, Ye was hospitalized, and the remainder of the tour was canceled.In some ways Ye’s music career has never quite recovered. In the six years since, his only performances have been scattered dates, with no proper tour befitting a major star. Once a frequent presence at the top of the Billboard charts, Ye has not had a huge hit in years. While his recent albums have usually opened at No. 1, they have then slid down the charts and been overshadowed by other releases.His career since has toggled between increasingly outrageous public controversies and sometimes remarkable creative achievements.On his 2021 album, “Donda,” he included industry pariahs like Marilyn Manson, who had been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, and DaBaby, who had made homophobic remarks and waffled about apologies. He made attacks on the comedian Pete Davidson, who was dating Ms. Kardashian, including in a music video in which an animated figure closely resembling Mr. Davidson is kidnapped and buried.Yet Ye’s “Sunday Service” performances — intimate, spiritual events including one at the Coachella festival in 2019 — mesmerized audiences. And his earlier period remains so popular that his catalog has held strong on streaming services, with more than 90 million streams a week in the United States over the last month, and a total of nearly four billion streams so far this year, according to the tracking service Luminate. His audience on the radio, on the other hand, has fallen by about 22 percent over the last month, as some stations have cut back on playing his songs.A Lucrative Fashion Partnership JeopardizedAt New York Fashion Week in 2015. The following year, he drew a crowd to Madison Square Garden for a fashion show and album premiere.Lucas Jackson/ReutersAs his music career has stumbled, Ye’s work in fashion has taken on new importance. The most lucrative corner of his empire appeared to be Yeezy’s partnership with Adidas, which began in 2013 after he left a collaboration with Nike. The Adidas deal, which involved both shoes and clothing, became hugely successful.Even before his recent controversies, Ye had been sparring publicly with Adidas executives, but so far the company has not elaborated on its statement more than two weeks ago that the partnership is “under review.” (The company announced Tuesday, after this article was published, that it was over.) There had been increasing pressure on the company to take action. On Sunday, after a group hung a banner reading “Kanye is right about the Jews” over a Los Angeles freeway, Jeffrey I. Abrams, the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director there, released a statement that concluded, “Decisive action against antisemitism by Adidas is long overdue.”It put Adidas in a difficult position. Its founder, Adi Dassler, belonged to the Nazi Party, and in Germany, where antisemitic statements made online can lead to prosecution, companies that played a role in the country’s dark history are often expected to uphold their responsibility to prevent the return of such sentiment.Ye has long been interested in fashion. In 2009, he interned at Fendi with Virgil Abloh, who went on to work with Ye’s Donda creative agency before starting his own brand. That year Ye also brought a group of collaborators and friends to “crash” Paris Fashion Week.A luxury debut (DW by Kanye West) at Paris Fashion Week in 2011 was critically savaged and lasted only two seasons, but his partnership with Adidas proved transformative. The company underwrote his clothing brand, Yeezy, which unveiled its first collection at New York Fashion Week in 2015, with Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Rihanna and Diddy sitting in the front row.Within a few seasons Ye packed Madison Square Garden with 20,000 people for a fashion show and album premiere. While his Season 4 show on Roosevelt Island in September 2016 proved a debacle, his potent combination of reality-TV celebrity, music stardom, sneaker success and establishment disruption was impossible to resist for an industry that often felt stuck in the last century.It is also why partnering with Yeezy was so appealing to Gap, the mall brand whose sales and cultural relevance were floundering. Gap hoped the partnership, announced in 2020, would last 10 years and generate $1 billion in annual sales.Instead it lasted about two years, and produced only two products until a third party — Balenciaga — was brought in to accelerate the line. Lawyers for Ye argued that Gap broke “contractual obligations.” Gap said it was “deciding to wind down the partnership.” Ye has suggested that he may open his own line of retail shops.Then, last month, Ye went to Paris. He modeled for Balenciaga, and held his own show, where he proved he could still draw top industry names — including the Vogue editors Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful and the designer John Galliano, who attended, and the model Naomi Campbell, who walked in the show.Before the event began, Ye offered what turned out to be a preview of what was to come: “You can’t manage me,” he told the crowd. “This is an unmanageable situation.”He made good on his promise.Courting Controversy, and the RightYe meeting with Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office in 2018.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesWith Ye in Paris, photographed in her own “White Lives Matter” shirt, was Candace Owens, a conservative activist and media personality who shares his love for the spotlight and taste for provocation.Ye has embraced conservative politics since 2016, when he announced his support for Mr. Trump, meeting him at Trump Tower while he was president-elect and later in the Oval Office when he was president.For several years he has associated with Ms. Owens, a fellow Trump supporter who has become one of the country’s most prominent Black critics of the Black Lives Matter movement. In April 2018, Ye tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” Ms. Owens accompanied him to an interview with TMZ Live the following month in which he called American slavery a “choice,” spurring outrage.“When you hear about slavery for 400 years — for 400 years?” he said. “That sounds like a choice. You was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? We’re mentally in prison.”This month Ms. Owens posted on Twitter that Ye had been “officially kicked out of JP Morgan Chase bank,” which she described as “frightening.” In fact, Ye had decided to leave the bank, and he announced his intention to do in September on CNBC.Ye attended the Oct. 12 Nashville premiere of Ms. Owens’s documentary “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM.” Ye then went on the podcast Drink Champs and questioned the official account of Mr. Floyd’s death, for which a police officer was convicted of murder. His remarks prompted outrage from the Floyd family and an apology from the show’s host, N.O.R.E.After Twitter and Instagram restricted Ye’s accounts this month in response to antisemitic posts, the social media platform Parler, which bills itself as a platform for uncancelable free speech, announced that it would be sold to Ye. Its chief executive, George Farmer, is Ms. Owens’s husband.Struggles With Mental HealthYe’s recent antisemitic outbursts and other provocations have prompted some in the music industry to wonder whether his behavior was related to his mental health struggles.Ye has long alluded to mental health issues in lyrics — as early as 2005, in “Gossip Files,” he raps, “They told my mama I was bipolar, had A.D.D.” — but his psychiatric treatment did not become part of the public record until 2016, when he was hospitalized.He has acknowledged a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but at times, including during his 2018 meeting with Mr. Trump, questioned it and said that his problem might have been sleep deprivation. He told David Letterman the following year that he had been “hyper-paranoid” when he was hospitalized, convinced that people wanted to kill him.He continued to address mental illness over the years in interviews, on social media and in his work, often expressing reluctance to take psychiatric medications. In 2018 he tweeted, “6 months off meds I can feel me again.”During the summer of 2020, when he was often disjointed, emotional and meandering on social media and in public appearances, Ms. Kardashian, who was still married to him, issued a statement on Instagram asking for “compassion and empathy” as he managed his symptoms, suggesting his family had tried and failed to get him into treatment.For a person with bipolar disorder, a manic episode is “a very sped-up state,” said David Miklowitz, a clinical psychologist and the author of “The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide.” “They’re full of ideas, sometimes ideas that get grandiose and delusionally unrealistic.”It can be difficult for friends and family to disentangle whether a person in a manic episode is delusional, or expressing their true beliefs.Rwenshaun Miller, 35, a psychotherapist who has bipolar disorder, said he regretted that Ye “doesn’t have someone around to take his phone” and ensure that he receives treatment. But he said the rapper should be forced to reckon with the consequences of his behavior. “I know it can make you do certain things, but it is also up to me to take accountability for things that happen when I am in a manic episode,” he said.The Industry Watches, and WaitsYe brought a Sunday Service performance to Coachella in 2019.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesWhile people in the entertainment industry, including many who have worked with Ye in the past, privately express shock about his recent comments, few have spoken publicly.But the heads of two major talent agencies that do not represent Ye have called for people to stop working with him. Ari Emanuel, the chief executive of Endeavor, the parent company of the agency WME, wrote an opinion article for The Financial Times calling on entertainment companies — including Spotify, Apple and “whoever organizes West’s tours” — to cease working with Ye.Jeremy Zimmer, the chief executive of United Talent Agency, wrote in an internal email that “we’re seeing a surge in antisemitism in our communities, fueled by Kanye’s comments” and urged a boycott.Representatives of Spotify and Apple did not respond to requests for comment. Universal Music Group, the parent of Def Jam, and AEG Presents, the global concert company that puts on Coachella, declined to comment.Some of the industry’s silence may be strategic, as key players wait to see if Ye — still widely considered an immensely talented musician with a gift for seizing attention — will express contrition and begin a comeback cycle. A successful one could be lucrative for any partner.Melissa Eddy More

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      There Is No Excuse for Ye’s ‘White Lives Matter’ Shirt

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      Not from Ye. And not from his new YZY collection.PARIS — Yeezy is dead. Long live YZY. Stage three of the ambitions of Ye — the artist formerly known as Kanye West — to dress the world has begun.Presumably that was supposed to be the takeaway from the surprise show of Paris Fashion Week, held off-schedule in an empty office tower just down the road from the Arc de Triomphe.Though it turned out to be only nominally a fashion show and more like “The YZY Experience”: a chaotic mess of self-justification, confessional, bone-picking and messianic ambition, with a “White Lives Matter” shot of shock and provocation that overshadowed the clothes on the runway.The rumors began during the weekend, just a day or so before the Balenciaga mud show. Ye was in Paris and was going to stage a fashion show — a little more than two weeks after ending his much-ballyhooed partnership with Gap.Maybe it would happen Monday? Maybe not; Ye had just fired his PR agency. No wait, it was happening; he had found another agency. Then, Sunday night, a digital invite arrived. For the next evening. Guests were asked not to share the address.Monday at 5:45 p.m., the Avenue de la Grande Armée was heaving with screaming fans and photographers. So much for secrecy. They outnumbered the show’s actual attendees by what seemed like 100 to one.Still, Anna Wintour came. So did John Galliano. Demna, the Balenciaga designer, and Cédric Charbit, its chief executive. Alexandre Arnault, the chief marketing officer of Tiffany & Company and a son of the LVMH chieftain Bernard Arnault. Then they all sat, playing with the soap-on-rope that looked like three granite blocks and had been left on every seat, waiting an hour and a half for the show to begin. (Well, OK, Anna and John left before the whole thing ended, but that was because they had another appointment, Ms. Wintour said.)It was as good a reflection as anything this week of just how the culture and power structure of fashion and entertainment has changed in the past decade. Because it was 11 years ago, in early October 2011, that Ye held his first fashion show in Paris.The line at that time was called “Kanye West.” Heavy on the luxury frills — leather and fur and gold hardware — it was widely dismissed by its audience. But this time there they were, the powers that be of the industry, jumping at the last minute to see what Ye had to deliver.Which involved a live choir featuring a host of children from Ye’s new Donda Academy in California as well as his daughter, North, and began with his rambling speech about critics who complained about his shows being late; his former manager, Scooter Braun; his hospitalization (Ye has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder); the pain of being called “crazy”; critics who complained that his clothes might not be well made; the people at Gap who didn’t get his vision; Bernard Arnault, whom he called “his new Drake”; and the news that he was establishing yet another version of his own fashion house and it started now.Because “we changed the look of fashion over the last 10 years. We are the streets. We are the culture.” And when it comes to the culture, “I am Ye, and everyone knows I am the leader.”Except this leader was wearing an oversize shirt with a photo of Pope John Paul II and the words “Seguiremos tu ejemplo” (“We will follow your example”) on the front, and “White Lives Matter” on the back — a phrase that the Anti-Defamation League has called hate speech and attributed to white supremacists (including the Ku Klux Klan), who began using it in 2015 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.The shirt was impossible to miss because, as he spoke, Ye’s image was projected behind him on a wall four stories high.Besides, Candace Owens, the conservative commentator, was in the audience and wearing one, too. Later the shirt appeared as part of the collection, modeled by Selah Marley, the daughter of Lauryn Hill and granddaughter of Bob Marley. (Matthew M. Williams, the Givenchy designer who worked with Mr. West earlier in his career; Michéle Lamy, Rick Owen’s wife; and Naomi Campbell also walked in the show.)It was the only message garment in the line, which was called SZN9 in reference to the Yeezy shows that had come before, created in conjunction with Shayne Oliver, the former designer of Hood By Air (Ye is nothing if not a great spotter and cultivator of talent). Which made it stand out even more in a show otherwise focused on garments that could simply be pulled onto the body, with no hardware — buttons or zips or snaps — involved, an idea that Ye first began talking about in the context of his work with Gap.As it happened, a lot of this line looked like that line, especially that part of that line engineered with Balenciaga’s Demna, including the full-body catsuits that opened the show, the duvet-like puffer ponchos, the blouson jackets and sweats that made the torso into a sort of steroid-filled G.I. Joe triangle, the lack of seams and the semi-apocalyptic palette.It has potential, but the import got swamped by the shirt, what it symbolized, and how its endorsement by a figure such as Ye — even one with a track record of wearing MAGA hats and toying with Confederate imagery — could be used as a rallying cry by those who already buy into its message.“Indefensible behavior,” wrote Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, the Vogue editor, on Instagram. Later adding, “there is no excuse, there is no art here.” Jaden Smith, in the audience, walked out. So did Lynette Nylander, the Dazed writer and editor.The next day, at the Chanel show, Edward Enninful, the editor of British Vogue and the most powerful Black man in fashion media, called the shirt “inappropriate” and “insensitive, given the state of the world.”Ms. Nylander had posted, “It doesn’t matter what the intention was … it’s perception to the masses out of context.”Indeed, in the end, it is the shirt out of context that made the news: not Ye’s theories about dress, or his allegations that Mr. Arnault promised to set him up in his own house and then reneged and now has become Ye’s biggest competition (an LVMH representative said Mr. Arnault had “no comment”); not even Ye’s assertion that, having disrupted the fashion week spotlight, he still felt “at war.” If so, this was a grenade that backfired.As to why he did it, backstage Ye declined to provide any theoretical framework. “It says it all,” he said, of the shirt. But what exactly does it say?That he truly believes he can appropriate the language of racial violence with irony? That someday the power structure of Black and white will be reversed, and since he says this collection is the future, that’s the world he envisions? That Ye gets a kick out of pushing everyone’s buttons? That he wants to see how far he can go and doesn’t really care about, or think about, the collateral damage in the meantime (including to those children singing at his feet), despite the violence this could feed?Or that, as he said in his speech, “You can’t manage me. This is an unmanageable situation.” More

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      Gap and Kanye West Officially End Partnership

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      The experiment in corporate disruption that was the partnership between Kanye West and Gap is officially over.Ye, as Mr. West is now known, formally notified Gap via a letter on Thursday that he was terminating their agreement involving the Yeezy Gap apparel line, citing breach of contract. Instead, Ye is moving ahead with plans to open his own stores.The partnership, announced with a drumroll of publicity in June 2020, had the possibility of lasting 10 years and, Gap hoped, generating more than $1 billion in annual sales. Yeezy Gap would encompass men’s, women’s and children’s wear and benefit both sides, turning around the fortunes of the Gap by giving it the veneer of cool and giving Ye access to the mass market.Gap acknowledged that the agreement was ending in a message to employees.“While we share a vision of bringing high-quality, trend-forward, utilitarian design to all people through unique omni experiences with Yeezy Gap, how we work together to deliver this vision is not aligned,” the Gap brand president, Mark Breitbard, wrote. “And we are deciding to wind down the partnership.”Lawyers for Ye originally sent a breach-of-contract notice to Gap on Aug. 16. Gap responded with a letter on Aug. 23, but according to Ye’s lawyer, Nicholas Gravante Jr., “Gap left him no choice but to terminate their agreement.”He did so on Thursday, arguing in a notice that the retailer had “abandoned its contractual obligations.” The notice, a copy of which was viewed by The New York Times, said Gap had failed to sell products in its namesake stores and had not opened stores for the specific purpose of selling Yeezy products. YZY Gap stores were supposed to open in the latter half of 2021, the letter said.“Ye had diligently tried to work through these issues with Gap both directly and through counsel,” Mr. Gravante, co-head of global litigation at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, said.He added that Ye would “promptly move forward to make up for lost time by opening Yeezy retail stores.”Gap plans to continue to sell new Yeezy Gap products that have already been created, including a collection for the holiday season, through the first half of next year.The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on Ye’s notifying Gap that he wanted to end the partnership.Two years ago, when the mall stalwart rolled out its splashy announcement about teaming up with Ye, the company’s stock price had its biggest uptick in at least 40 years. Industry insiders were surprised at the partnership between a very corporate entity and a very uncorporate artist. Mickey Drexler, a former chief executive of Gap, later told Yahoo Finance that “it doesn’t make any sense, in my opinion.”At the time, Mr. Breitbard said the retailer was excited to work closely with Ye in “defining a next-level retail partnership.”Ye and Demna introduced the first limited release of Yeezy Gap, engineered by Balenciaga.The full line of 36 styles reached stores in July.via GapThe deal included an option to renew after five years, at which point Gap was hoping that Yeezy Gap would be generating $1 billion in annual sales. The company originally said Yeezy Gap merchandise was expected to appear in stores in 2021, but the release date kept being pushed back. Analysts on calls with Gap executives often asked for updates on the apparel line.In the first 18 months of the deal, only two products were released: a puffer jacket and a sweatshirt. They were sold online only.Not until May, after Ye enlisted the help of Demna, the single-named designer of Balenciaga, and that brand’s ateliers was a full line of 36 styles, Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga, unveiled. Those products finally reached stores in July, many of them at higher prices than usual for the Gap: hoodies for $240, T-shirts for $140.Shoppers had lined up around a Gap location in Times Square, where the clothes were purposefully piled in what looked like garbage bin bags throughout the store.Whether it would be enough to change the trajectory of the Gap was unclear. In its most recent quarter, Gap brand sales fell 10 percent from the year before. The Balenciaga Yeezy line is governed by a different contract and will not be affected by the Yeezy Gap termination notice.According to Danielle Tully, another partner at Cadwalader, Ye is “not taking any action in respect to that contract at this time.”The partnership with Ye is rupturing as Gap is searching for a permanent chief executive. Sonia Syngal, who oversaw the Yeezy Gap deal, left the chain in July. Bob Martin is serving as interim chief executive.Ye has also posted statements on Instagram suggesting he is unhappy with his even longer-term relationship with Adidas. In 2020, the partnership brought in nearly $1.7 billion in revenue, according to Bloomberg. It is set to expire in 2026.Ye is known for being very opinionated and liking control, said Staci Jennifer Trager, who leads the fashion law practice at Nixon Peabody, where she is a partner. That can be difficult when working in a partnership.“Kanye seems to have a very specific vision and a very strong desire to see things in a certain way,” Ms. Trager said. “That level of control and desire to control things and execute in that way may not be aligned with collaborating with a brand.”These brand partnerships are like a marriage, she said. Couples have to compromise on which restaurant they go to, even if one of them doesn’t like the cuisine. Ye’s move was the equivalent of ripping up the dinner plans.“Now he can make all of the decisions, and he can have pasta every single night,” Ms. Trager said. More

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      Chaos and Creation: Inside the Making of Yeezy Gap

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      In 2020, two fashion brands announced an unusual alliance. Now that goods are finally hitting stores, is Yeezy Gap a corporate-creative cautionary tale, or a new model for fashion to come?It was almost 90 degrees in Times Square on Thursday morning when a scene began to play out on Broadway that was so unexpected it could have been a mirage: 100 people were wrapped around the block outside the Gap, waiting for its doors to open.Inside the store, which had been transformed into a kind of blackened cavern punctuated by digital screens, 24 industrial-size sacks were lined up in two long rows and stuffed with clothing from Yeezy Gap, the collaboration between the artist formerly known as Kanye West (now simply Ye) and the giant ur-American brand.For anyone following the partnership since its buzzy birth more than two years ago, this was a major development: the first time customers would be able to see and touch the clothes inside a store — albeit not hung from racks or folded on shelves, but piled into those huge bags.They would get to try on the unisex tees, double-layered hoodies and long-sleeve shirts in dark colors: tops with slightly skewed, look-again proportions, sometimes seamless or cropped, with dropped shoulders. When they swiveled in front of the fitting room mirrors, they would see images of doves in flight printed across their backs.

      .css-fg61ac{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;position:relative;}@media (min-width:600px){.css-fg61ac{margin-bottom:0;-webkit-flex-basis:calc(2 / 3 * 100%);-ms-flex-preferred-size:calc(2 / 3 * 100%);flex-basis:calc(2 / 3 * 100%);}}.css-1ga3qu9{-webkit-flex-basis:50%;-ms-flex-preferred-size:50%;flex-basis:50%;}.css-rrq38y{margin:1rem auto;max-width:945px;}.css-1wsofa1{margin-top:10px;color:var(–color-content-quaternary,#727272);font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,’times new roman’,times,Songti TC,simsun,serif;font-weight:400;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:1.125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1wsofa1{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;}}@media (max-width:600px){.css-1wsofa1{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}.css-1nnraid{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;margin:0 auto;gap:4px;}@media (min-width:600px){.css-1nnraid{-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;height:auto;gap:8px;}}.css-1yworrz{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row-reverse;-ms-flex-direction:row-reverse;flex-direction:row-reverse;gap:4px;}@media (min-width:600px){.css-1yworrz{-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-flex-basis:calc((100% / 3) – 4px);-ms-flex-preferred-size:calc((100% / 3) – 4px);flex-basis:calc((100% / 3) – 4px);gap:8px;}}Outside the Gap in Times Square, where the store’s design was “re-engineered” to mark the first time Yeezy Gap products would be sold in a physical store.

      Ultimately they would get to judge for themselves how the boxy silhouettes and thick cotton differed from Gap’s typical offering — and decide whether that was enough to shift the fortunes of the brand: to make people across the country line up in anticipation, spend with alacrity and see Gap once again as a defining, disruptive staple of American fashion.As opposed to viewing it as a corporation — Gap Inc. is the parent company of Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Athleta — that is currently wrestling with the departure of its chief executive after only two years, along with diminishing profits (including a net $162 million loss in the first quarter of this year) and dwindling cultural relevance.It was that uncool factor that seemingly drove Gap to announce, in June 2020, a 10-year deal with the undeniably cool Ye and his fashion line Yeezy, with the option to renew at the five-year mark, at which point Gap hoped Yeezy Gap would be generating $1 billion in annual sales. Though mass-market brands have engaged in one-off collaborations with high-end designers and celebrities for years, Yeezy Gap was, in scope and ambition, unlike any the retail world had seen.Except that in its first 18 months, the partnership yielded just two products, both sold only online.It wasn’t until a third party, Balenciaga, the French luxury house, entered the collaboration that a full Yeezy Gap collection was finally released this year (though it was still relatively small, with 36 styles in total unveiled in May). This weekend, a portion of the collection is being rolled out in about 50 stores nationwide, in cities including Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco: a selection of eight styles, with more promised later in the year.It is a milestone in the much-watched collaboration, but one that raises the question: What took so long?The display inside the Times Square store: industrial-size sacks filled with Yeezy Gap clothing.via GapWhen Corporate Meets CreativeGoing into the Gap deal, Ye had a certain track record in the fashion-for-the-masses business; in 2020, the sneaker collaboration between Yeezy and Adidas brought in nearly $1.7 billion in revenue, according to Bloomberg.He had less success in building a ready-to-wear brand. An early attempt at a glitzy namesake luxury label in Paris had fizzled, and a comeback with the more minimal, conceptual athleisure Yeezy yielded unpredictable results (including one widely criticized show on Roosevelt Island at which models fainted in the heat). Still, there was no denying his cultural influence and compulsive watchability.Gap’s footing was less sure. In 2020, the brand’s net sales (about $3.4 billion) had been declining every year since 2013, largely in line with the demise of many traditional shopping malls (and not helped by the pandemic). That year, Gap Inc. said it would close 30 percent of its Gap and Banana Republic stores in North America, about 350 locations in total, by January 2024.Industry wisdom said the company needed something big to stop the downward spiral. Ye was about as big as they come.But he was not, as Mickey Drexler, who led Gap from 1983 to 2002, told Yahoo Finance in 2021, “a corporate person, and Gap is a big corporation,” with hierarchies, systems, calendars and fluency in SKUs. Mr. Drexler said he had advised Ye against the deal. “It doesn’t make any sense, in my opinion,” Mr. Drexler said at the time.Julie Gilhart, the president of Tomorrow Projects, agreed. “In my experience, Gap was all about risk management,” she said. “They didn’t want to disgruntle anyone. And if you go with Kanye, you have to know there is risk involved.”One week after the Yeezy Gap deal was announced, for example, he announced his run for president; a string of heated campaign remarks and tweets about his family compelled his wife at the time, Kim Kardashian West, to make a statement about his bipolar disorder.But the controversy did not deter either side. They had agreed to an arrangement in which Ye’s fortunes were tied to those of his products; he received stock warrants that would vest when certain sales goals — such as reaching $250 million in a fiscal year, — were met, as well as royalties. (Gap has not disclosed the line’s sales figures to date.)Ye — whose vision, according to Gap, was to create “modern, elevated basics for men, women and kids at accessible price points” — got to work, bringing on the Nigerian-British designer Mowalola Ogunlesi as design director and testing out pieces as early as the summer of 2020. (Ms. Ogunlesi left after a year, at the expiration of her contract.)According to two people who worked on the collaboration, the original goal was to have a collection ready by Singles Day, an annual Chinese shopping event, in November 2020. The garments were conceived to be relatively affordable, priced around $50.Images from that period shared with The New York Times showed brightly colored pants, shorts, shirts, hoodies and belts, all in line with the traditional casual clothing associated with Gap. (In a video shared on Twitter by Ye from a fitting in July 2020, at least one tie-dye-effect pink and purple bodysuit is visible.) At the time, there were numerous “style-ups” — a fashion term that means trying out samples of clothing on bodies to see how they look — photographed by Nick Knight, the SHOWStudio founder and longtime Yeezy collaborator, and paid for by Gap.But these designs were never put into production, despite what the two former employees described as long hours and mounting impatience from Gap over missed deadlines — and despite the fact that it is almost unheard-of in the industry to eliminate almost an entire collection once samples have been made.Taking the Yeezy Gap “round jacket” for a walk.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesAccording to Zac Posen, who has worked with Target, Brooks Brothers and David’s Bridal, as well as having his own fashion line, the “standard” ratio of sample garments that ultimately end up in stores was historically 2 to 1 (for every two samples, one was chosen and one discarded). Though Mr. Posen said he had “heard of 3 to 1 or even 4 to 1, that’s less common these days,” as brands, especially public brands like Gap, become more oriented to the bottom line.Ye, however, was widely known to be both a perfectionist and a nonconformist.“I don’t think his mentality is at all the mentality we see in more classic fashion houses,” said Mr. Knight, the photographer. “If he wants to spend a year looking into the color blue, we’ll spend a year looking into the color blue, which is extremely inspiring when so often schedules take priority over creativity. He doesn’t see himself in any way constrained by deadlines or seasons. I don’t think he would even use the word ‘collection’ for what he is doing.”Referring to the 2020 designs that weren’t put into production, a Gap spokeswoman said in an email that “a collection was not discarded; this was part of the creative process. The team was intentional about iterating until they were satisfied.” The broader goal was “product development, testing and learning.”One early product that survived the creative process was the “round jacket,” a puffy jacket with no closures made from recycled nylon and polyester fill.This was Yeezy Gap’s first piece, made available for purchase in June 2021, nearly one year after the partnership was announced. It was sold for $200 in three colors (first blue, then black and later red), and those who preordered received the jacket about five months later.Yeezy Gap’s second piece dropped online a few months later: a plain, heavy cotton hoodie in six colors for $90. Ye later claimed that after airing a commercial featuring the hoodie, Gap sold $14 million worth of the black version. (Gap would not confirm this figure, though previously said the hoodie broke its single-day online sales record.)Its name? The “perfect hoodie.”Avatars in a “virtual game experience” designed by Demna and released on Thursday.via Gapvia GapThe Balenciaga FactorBetween the puffer and the hoodie, Gap intervened, hiring Leonardo Lawson, the former chief executive of the British brand the Vampire’s Wife, to help drive strategy for Yeezy Gap — with Ye’s blessing, Mr. Lawson said. (Ye did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)Mr. Lawson’s directive has essentially been to build a conduit between Yeezy and Gap, acting as a translator of sorts. He helped opened a Los Angeles office for Yeezy Gap, whose operations had previously been spread out across several cities, depending on where Ye and his core team were at any given time. This “innovation studio” today houses about 20 employees, said Mr. Lawson, who was promoted to head of Yeezy Gap in March.“We’re constantly flexing, depending on the needs, and helping each side understand what the asks are, why things need to be done, what maybe we cannot do,” he said.Mr. Lawson was asked about the early structural difficulties of the partnership. “When I came here, to be honest, I saw it,” he said. “I think everyone knows and understands that Ye’s background and pedigree and fashion is really working with luxury houses and ateliers in Europe. Those systems and how those companies work and are set up are very different than how a company like Gap is set up. So it was really about bringing these two worlds together.”Meanwhile, Ye, who released his album “Donda” the same month Mr. Lawson was brought on board, had already asked Demna to get involved.The mononymous creative director of Balenciaga had worked with Ye on his first Yeezy collection, “Season 1,” in 2015, and the two men have maintained an ongoing creative conversation via WhatsApp and text — Ye’s preferred means of communication — ever since.“Ye called me in March 2021 telling me he was working on this project, and it was his dream for me to work together with him on it,” Demna said this month. “He said this is what he needs there: to bring this know-how to the brand, bring the structure; fittings, atelier, patternmaker. The way they were doing things was more trying them on and styling rather than constructing.”The Ye version of a checkout counter at the Gap in Times Square.via GapThough he was busy with several Balenciaga collections, Demna said he felt the need to “be there for him to help him create a solid foundation for Ye’s aesthetic on which they can now build. To accelerate the process.” Hence the name of the collaboration: “engineered by Balenciaga.” They were, Demna said, engineering the prototypes in the Balenciaga studios in Paris and Zurich after he and Ye talked (or texted) through the ideas.“Lots of talking, thousands of images shared,” he said of their exchanges. They talked about how Ye wanted a “fabric that is very light but also warm and makes no sound — kind of like nylon, but not nylon. Things that seemed to be impossible or very hard to make technically.“Ye’s not really interested in fashion at all,” Demna said. “He wants to know: ‘How can we make a new version of the hoodie? What’s next? What do we want to wear in 20 years?’”Then, Demna said, once “the shape was there, I would make a decision — OK, it’s ready, we launch it.” At that point, he would send the designs to Ye and the Gap teams in Los Angeles, after which they would “start the process on how to industrialize them.” (Ye also went to Paris, and Mr. Lawson said prototypes were also created by the Yeezy Gap team in Los Angeles, and characterized the work as a three-way partnership.)“Me being on board gave him reassurance,” Demna said, “so there could be a moment of letting go.”And the clothes, which included a catsuit ($300), cargo pants ($220) and thigh-high boots (coming later this year), could, with the help of the strengthened Los Angeles infrastructure, make it out of the experimental phase and into the public’s waiting hands.The first Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga (or YGEBB, as it’s called internally) designs were made available for purchase online in late February.A week later, Ye was in the news again, for a music video in which an animated version of himself buries Pete Davidson, Ms. Kardashian’s new boyfriend, alive.The “virtual game experience” playing on screens outside the Times Square store.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesWhat Happens Now?Gap’s preferred word to explain the unconventional production timeline of Yeezy Gap is “fluid.”The work with Balenciaga “really has been a fluid collaboration,” Mr. Lawson said. The entire experience of building Yeezy Gap “has been about being fluid,” and “creating new ways of doing things, and understanding how these ways of doing things will impact the bigger Gap brand and help everything be a little bit more fluid.”But is fluidity enough to help Gap make a profit? This spring, before the largest Yeezy Gap drop to date (the Balenciaga collection in late May), analysts who spoke to The Times were skeptical of Ye’s long-term effect on Gap as a company.“Anyone who was excited about the Yeezy partnership when it was announced is disappointed with the amount of product that is coming out,” said Simeon Siegel, a retail analyst at BMO Capital Markets.The discussion around Yeezy Gap has largely morphed from focusing on sales to focusing on buzz. And Gap is investing considerably in that buzz: in addition to fees Ye has already been or will be paid for the collection — and the costs of maintaining the innovation studio, as well as its sampling and production — Gap also provides support for music videos and concerts that feature Yeezy Gap products.“The Yeezy line was never going to be big enough to change Gap’s fortunes,” Mr. Siegel said. “It needed to be powerful enough to elevate the rest of Gap’s brand, and we clearly have not seen that.”With the advent of the in-store product, however, that could change. Already 70 percent of Yeezy Gap’s customers are first-time Gap customers, the company said during an earnings call last year.Mr. Lawson said that Gap interim leadership is fully committed to the Yeezy Gap vision. Ye himself posted a recent statement on Instagram after a call with Gap management calling the executive chairman Bob Martin “one of the most inspiring people I’ve heard speak in business.”“Bob I need to meet with you as soon as possible,” he wrote. (This may not be the way Mr. Martin usually sets up meetings, but according to a Gap spokeswoman, the appointment was already in motion.)According to Demna, Balenciaga’s work on the project is now over, and he’s not sure what will happen next. But Yeezy Gap has its sights on other future partnerships, in addition to growing its core business. There is a structure in place to adapt and iterate for the future: Yeezy Gap engineered by … fill in the bank.As Demna said, when it comes to Ye: “This was just step No. 1. He needed a starting point, and that was my challenge: to give him the starting point. But he is still miles and miles away from where he wants this to go.” More

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      Is the Yeezy Gap Jacket Really Any Good?

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      The first product of the much-hyped collaboration made a big splash. But can Kanye West actually save Gap?The reveal of the first Yeezy Gap jacket on June 8, a year after the partnership between Kanye West and the beleaguered maker of American basics was announced, went pretty much as expected.First came the crazed excitement, the release of all that pent-up expectation: OMG! OMG! The future is finally here. And on Kanye’s birthday!Then, when it was clear you could preorder the jacket, the rush to get there first was on. CNBC excitedly reported it had sold out! So fast! The news went viral. It turned out to be fake.(Actually, the site crashed and is now back up. This is a preorder, not a limited edition drop. There is no finite number of sales because no actual jackets have yet been produced. You can keep buying for six more days.)And finally, the backlash: Wait, the jacket, which is made of recycled blue nylon, actually looks sort of like a trash bag. Also a deflated balloon.Now that 24 hours have elapsed and the dust has settled, perhaps it is time to step back and consider the jacket itself: Is it any good? And is it likely to do what it is supposed to do — what this whole partnership with Mr. West is supposed to do — which is wipe the slate clean, offer a new start and make Gap, which was struggling even before the pandemic, cool again?A qualified maybe.via GapThe jacket itself arrived like a puffer from another planet, suspended bodiless in the air of a Gap Instagram post or projected ghostlike against buildings in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, wafting slightly in the breeze. It is made from recycled nylon with a polyester fill (which one hopes is also recycled, though Gap did not specify; if it isn’t, that would be kind of … ahem). It is unisex and oversize with a squishy, tactile look and curving, tubular arms. There is a seam up the backbone and under each arm.It has no closures or additions to material of any kind, which may be interesting from a conceptual point of view but slightly problematic from a functional one, especially if, say, your hands are full so you can’t clutch it shut, and there’s a big wind.It also costs $200, which is pretty high for Gap, albeit lowish for Yeezy. It is named, in a Warhol way, the “round jacket,” because it looks, you know, round.And it is apparently the next stage of Mr. West’s new aesthetic, which has to do with reduction and the stripping away of excess. (See his most recent Paris Fashion Week return, where he described his clothes as made for “the service industry,” though it was hard not to think the service industry he was talking about was located on planet Jakku of “Star Wars.”)Mr. West himself had modeled his creation a few days earlier while out and about, and the brief appearance showed just how big and duvet-like the jacket, which swallowed his hands, actually is.To a certain extent, of course, it doesn’t matter if the jacket is flattering, or pragmatic. It is a first, and this is a historic collaboration from both a business and cultural perspective, so it will serve as a sort of artifact, or totem. The deal between Mr. West and Gap is long-term and lucrative; both brands are, in their own ways, part of the story of our times. Those who rushed to preorder may get their jackets and find out that they don’t like them at all, but they will do just fine on the secondary market. There are no doubt many who, schooled in sneaker entrepreneurship, bought them expressly for resale.That won’t affect Gap’s ability to boast about the sales figures of the jacket, though it may not set a reliable precedent when it comes to the next drops, and the drops after that. Gap is not a provider of limited resources, and limited resources are, of course, the most exciting ones. Though maybe the plan is to change all that.It seemed that way at first because Gap wiped its entire Instagram history to show simply the jacket, as though it was Day 1, a move that is rarely taken by an established brand since it seems to repudiate everything its customers bought before. See when Hedi Slimane arrived at Celine.And it also seemed that way because the jacket was apparently introduced and offered only in the United States.It turns out, however, that an international rollout is imminent, though Gap would not say exactly when. So Yeezy fans outside America don’t have to plot how to get their hands on a jacket after all.As for investors, Gap’s share price rose slightly on the day of the release but not in any unusual way. (At least it didn’t drop; maybe investors were relieved that Mr. West didn’t carry through on his threat to not make any product unless he got a Gap board seat.)But here’s the thing: Cool and accessibility are antithetical concepts; the more accessible and omnipresent something becomes, the less cool. If Mr. West and Gap can change that, they will have changed a lot more than style and their own reputations; they will have changed how we think. The real test will come with a full collection.Especially because Gap recently announced another new deal, for homewares — with Walmart. More