Yeezy Season 5 Was Kanye’s Long-Awaited Exhale
On Wednesday, Kanye West went against custom: he decided not to appear at the end of his Yeezy Season 5 presentation, bucking a long-practiced tradition for fashion designers when debuting new work. Fittingly enough, the lead up to his fifth fashion presentation had also been pretty Kanye-less: no tweets, no streams, no snippets, no in-progress photo updates — a stark departure from his approach to presenting creative undertakings in the past, be they in fashion or in music. This time around, Kanye’s absence and lack of spectacle worked to a different end: he wanted the work — and only the work — to speak for itself.
The show was held in a small section of a warehouse at Pier 59. Attendees were seated around what looked like a huge black cube, onto which models dressed in full Season 5 looks were projected. The images rotated in a slow 360 degrees so attendees could take in the details of each ensemble — an experience uncannily reminiscent of character selection menus in video games, a consideration not lost on Kanye. It was a consumer-first approach that did not detract from the collection as the main focus, one that allowed for the most comprehensive understanding of every piece before investing in it. The projected models eventually hit the runway IRL for the second half…
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